The term for retention of medical records

The Medical Treatment Contracts Act (WGBO) states that patient data must be retained for ten years, or for as long after the expiry of this period as is necessary in order to provide a proper standard of care. The background to this stipulation is the central principle underlying European and national privacy legislation, namely that personal data should not be retained for longer than is necessary in order to fulfil the purpose for which they were collected. The converse of this provision in the WGBO is therefore that data that are more than ten years old and no longer required in order to provide a proper standard of care must be destroyed. This obligation to destroy data has been deferred under a transitional provision until 1 April 2005.