HIPAA Document Destruction

Offices in the medical profession are faced with HIPAA document destruction standards that require documents that contain personal information to be shredded. The requirements were set up to protect patients against identity and information theft. It is also to protect their right to privacy. Offices need to show due diligence in hiring a reliable vendor to take care of their shredding needs. They must also give written permission to that company to remove the records for destruction purposes. Medical offices that are found to be in violation of HIPAA standards are subjected to civil and criminal penalties for breaching patient confidentiality. It is important to hire a company with a good reputation.

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Vendors that supply HIPAA document destruction provide the office with a locked storage bin. These bins are locked to keep nosy janitorial staff or refuse removal personnel from going through the documents, breaching the patient confidentiality. The bins are routinely emptied by taking them to the shredder, usually on site, in the truck. They empty the documents onto the shredder. The office records destruction process takes less than 10 minutes. The medical office is then presented with a certificate that states the documents were destroyed in compliance with HIPAA standards.

Destroying medical records through recycling is not allowed by HIPAA standards. Recycling without shredding puts the patient and the medical office in danger of having private information stolen. Shredding unneeded documents ensures information destruction. The shredding must be cross-cut shredding, turning the documents into confetti that is impossible to put back together.

Some offices attempt to handle their shredding needs in-house. This is not a viable solution. Often it creates more HIPAA concerns than it solves. Often, documents aren't stored in a secure location until they are shredded. This increases the chance of a non-authorized person of coming into contact with personal information. It is also not time efficient to have office staff shred the documents. On a typical office shredder, it would take an employee approximately 5 hours to shred 50 pounds of paper.

It takes the powerful truck shredders only about 10 minutes to accomplish the same task. Proper security protocol is more likely to not be followed when the office records destruction is done in-house. Document destruction companies also provide documentation that the records were destroyed as per HIPAA standards. These certificates can be used for proof of due diligence on the part of the medical office if a problem should arise.

Document shredding companies recycle the shredding waste to help the environment. Shredding companies help to protect the environment as well as the privacy of the patients and medical office.

Since striving to meet HIPAA guidelines is a difficult task, many medical offices are turning to shredding companies to handle the disposal of document containing private information. It is both a more economically efficient and secure way of destroying unneeded documents. Hiring a shredding vendor to handle HIPAA document destruction is the most sensible answer for most medical offices.