While used more for paper based records, storage centers offer the doctor a head ache free (almost) way of dealing with the requirements of keeping their records. However, you end up paying for that ease of use. Dr. John O’Brien-Bell wrote an interesting article for Canada Healthcare Network in 2013 about the costs, when BC decided to move from a 7 year retention period to a 16 year retention period. The full article can be found here in this link:
However, to summarize it – he estimates that the cost of maintaining the medical records for 16 years to be somewhere around $25,000 dollars. That is a lot of money for a retired doctor to shell out, especially when there is no revenue coming in to offset it.