Indexes should support searches by patient, date, and correspondence type within legal limits.
Retention ties to state and federal rules; e-discovery holds override normal deletion clocks when litigation looms.
Test restores; archives that cannot be opened under stress are liabilities.
Speed and documentation matter more than perfection in the first hour.
If a vendor touches PHI on your behalf, paperwork should match reality—not a dusty PDF no one read.
Fax persists in healthcare because it is familiar—not because it is magically secure.
Not every mailbox needs military-grade tooling—but unencrypted PHI to consumer Gmail is indefensible.