Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
Signed into federal law in 1996, HIPAA was created to combat fraud and abuse in the health insurance industry. The Act stipulates that all United States health care organizations must “maintain reasonable and appropriate, technical, and physical safeguards to prevent intentional or unintentional use or disclosure of protected health information.”
HIPAA protection attaches to all information relating “to the past, present, or future physical or mental health or condition of an individual, or the past, present, or future payment for the provision of healthcare.” Materials that would contain such protected information include patient histories, logs, notes, forms, billing, and insurance information, and any other records containing personal information in the possession of healthcare providers.
Who is affected by HIPAA?
Regardless of size, all healthcare providers in the United States must have documented policies defining reasonable measures that are being taken to protect personal health information and ensure the organization is protecting against unauthorized access to personal information.
This includes all organizations or individuals who retain and/or collect health-related information, such as hospitals, medical centers, insurance companies, billing centers, collection agencies, doctors, dentists, chiropractors, psychiatrists, psychologists and any other institutions or individuals responsible for personal health-related information.
A Partner in Regulatory Compliance.
By purging outdated files or placing one of our locked security consoles in your office, Proshred® can assist your company in maintaining a document disposal program that meets HIPAA shredding requirements. Using state-of-the-art technology our highly trained and certified security professionals efficiently shred all documents right on your premises. We give you the option to watch the shredding process, and also provide you with a Certificate of Destruction that records each shred. Trust Proshred® as your partner in compliance with HIPAA for maintaining your document security program.
For more information on the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), visit: Health Information Privacy. For information about medical waste disposal, learn about our partnership with MedPro.