Dealing with the medical records left behind in the 2014 closure of Southwest Regional Medical Center will cost approximately $450,000.
That will leave approximately $645,000 to be divided among the many creditors who have filed lien against the hospital.
A hearing on the matter was held in Brown County Common Pleas Court on January 4.
Following a directive last fall from Judge Scott Gusweiler, attorneys for hospital receiver New Growth Advisors determined that keeping medical records for six years would satisfy federal and state records retention laws.
Therefore, all records from September 26, 2010 to the closure of the hospital on September 26, 2014 will be stored until September 26 of each year.  On that anniversary date each year, records older than six years will be destroyed.  The final set of records from 2014 will be destroyed in September of 2020.
The records, both paper and electronic, will now be maintained by Corporate Storage Systems of Cincinnati.
Anyone with records from September 2010 to September of 2014 can call (937) 378-7500 for detailed instructions on how to get their records.  The cost for retrieval will be $65.
The $450,000 cost for keeping the records available to the public comes from 44 months of storage fees for the paper records and technical support for the electronic records, along with the fees of the receiver and the receiver’s attorneys.
Notices will be mailed to former patients who were treated after September 26 of 2010 and have records available and notices will also be published in The Brown County Press, The News Democrat and The Cincinnati Enquirer.
A similar notice was published in October of last year, which resulted in approximately 1000 people retrieving their records.
According to a motion on the matter filed by the receiver’s attorneys, those who have requested records from the hospital but have not yet picked them up will have their records transferred to CSS.
After a records inventory, it was discovered that there were 126,672 patients with either paper or electronic medical records at the hospital, some dating back decades.
The last step in the case will be a hearing on how to distribute the remaining $645,000 or so, which is expected to happen within the next six weeks.
The case began as a foreclosure on the property by Brown County Treasurer Connie Patrick.  Those back taxes, in the amount of $636,032.70, were paid on November 18.
According to Brown County Auditor Jill Hall, the Georgetown Exempted Village School District will get the largest share of that money, approximately $407,000.
Money will also be distributed to the Western Brown School District, the villages of Georgetown and Mt. Orab, the townships were the properties in Mt. Orab and Georgetown were located.
Organizations with levies such as libraries and DD will also get a share and the county general fund will receive $24,169.
Hall said the money would be distributed in March with the rest of the semi-annual tax disbursements.