Record-keeping obligations attach to the signed note. How long the recording behind it is kept is a separate decision, and the practice settles it before the first recorded consult.
The recording and the signed note
The recording holds everything said in the room, including third-party voices and conversation unrelated to the presentation, and it carries no structure to search or redact. Deleting it leaves the signed note untouched.
How long the recording is held is a decision the practice makes.
How long the audio is kept
Retention windows in a scribe contract take a few shapes: the seconds of processing, a fixed window of hours or days for replay during review, a window the practice sets, or none at all. Ask which applies, where it is written down, and whether the system applies it without anyone acting.
Every month of retention past sign-off adds recordings the practice has to secure, produce on an access request and destroy.
What deletion covers
Soft deletion hides the recording and leaves it recoverable by an administrator. Hard deletion removes it from live systems. Establish which one a vendor means and who holds the recovery path.
A deleted recording persists in encrypted backups until they age out, and copies sit outside the database: buffered on the device before upload, held in the transcription pipeline, named in job logs. Put these in writing:
- The default retention period for consult audio, and where it is documented.
- Whether the practice can shorten it, and whether the system applies the change on its own.
- Whether deletion removes the recording from live systems, and who keeps a recovery path.
- How long encrypted backups hold a deleted recording before they expire.
- Whether audio is buffered on the clinician's device before upload, and when that copy is removed.
- Whether consult audio or its transcript is used to train or improve models, and whether that goes in the contract.
- The order the export and the purge run in on leaving the service, and written confirmation that the purge completed.
Australian privacy and record-keeping law
A recording of a consultation is health information, which the Privacy Act 1988 treats as sensitive information. Australian Privacy Principle 11 requires reasonable steps to protect it, and APP 11.2 requires reasonable steps to destroy or de-identify personal information once it is no longer needed for a permitted purpose.
Health records legislation in New South Wales, Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory requires the clinical record to be kept for seven years from the last entry for an adult, and for a child, until that person turns 25. A retained recording is health information in its own right, with access, storage and destruction obligations.
Consult audio in aurii
aurii stores the consult audio alongside the transcript and the draft.
Session audio carries a purge date 30 days after the session by default, and a daily sweep deletes the expired recording from the audio store and clears the reference to it. Signed records, and the audit trail written over them, are held under the seven-year record-keeping obligation that sits with the practice. Deletion runs on request. What is deleted and what the practice keeps.
Answering a patient
Patients ask who hears the recording, how long it is kept, whether they can decline, and whether declining changes their care. Settle those four answers before the first recorded consult.
A deletion request can be answered with the date the recording is already scheduled for, or brought forward to that day.
This is general information about audio retention and deletion, not clinical or legal advice.