Document management that passes the audit.

Retention rules are configured as a schedule matrix during discovery — each document type (consent form, clinical note, insurance policy, claims file, credentialing record) is mapped to its applicable retention period under HIPAA, state medical records law, or state DOI requirements. The retention engine applies these rules automatically at ingestion, so a patient consent form and a commercial policy declaration are each held for their respective required periods without manual intervention. Rules are managed by compliance administrators through a configuration interface — no code change required to update a schedule when regulations change.

The audit trail captures every document access, download, print, share, modification, version change, and deletion attempt — logging the timestamp, actor identity (user ID and role), IP address, and action type for each event. Logs are cryptographically protected against modification and retained according to the configured retention policy. For an OCR investigation or DOI examination, export tools produce structured audit reports in formats commonly requested by examiners — filterable by document, by user, by date range, or by action type.

A legal hold is applied through the administrative console, scoped by custodian, matter, date range, or keyword. Documents matching the hold scope are frozen — they cannot be modified, shared externally, or destroyed until the hold is formally lifted by an authorized administrator. The hold scope is contained: documents outside it continue through their normal lifecycle without interruption. Every hold placement, modification, and lift is logged with actor and timestamp, producing a court-admissible chain-of-custody record that travels with any e-discovery export.

Integration is planned during the discovery phase and built as the first platform component. For EHR systems (Epic, Cerner, Meditech), we use FHIR R4 and HL7 v2 to pull clinical documents into the DMS automatically — applying classification rules and retention schedules at the source. For insurance management systems (Applied Epic, HawkSoft), we use direct API connectors or custom adapters. Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft 365 sync via Microsoft Graph API. In every case, the source system remains the system of record for the originating workflow — the DMS becomes the system of record for the document archive and its compliance obligations.

A custom DMS for a mid-market healthcare or insurance organization — covering document ingestion, classification, retention enforcement, audit trail, legal hold, and core source system integrations — typically takes 16–26 weeks from discovery to production, depending on the number of document types, integration complexity, and migration volume. Investment typically ranges from $150,000 to $550,000 for a full custom build. We deliver in phases, with the retention engine and audit infrastructure first, so your compliance obligations are addressed before the full platform is complete.

Migration is planned from the discovery sprint onward. For paper archives, we design a scanning and OCR workflow that extracts text and applies classification rules to each scanned document. For legacy digital storage (shared drives, prior DMS, SharePoint), we build automated extraction and transformation pipelines that reclassify documents, apply the correct retention schedules, and migrate them with a reconciliation report at each stage. Records migrate by type or department in validated waves — we never do a single big-bang migration — with a documented rollback plan at every stage.