The Importance of Medical Record Shredding

We live in a digital information age where social media rules our relationships and information travels at the speed of light. This means it’s exceptionally important for businesses in the healthcare industry to handle information with proper sensitivity. In fact, failure to take the right steps with document destruction can open you up to serious liability from your clients and the government. Learn why medical record shredding is so important, and what you can do to remain HIPAA compliant and on solid legal ground.

HIPAA Compliant Medical Record Shredding

Destroying patient files when they are out of date is a lot more complex than simply dropping them in an office shredder. There have been tons of stories in the news over the past few years about hackers or dumpster-diving criminals getting hold of sensitive medical information.

The consequences when this happens can be disastrous. For a healthcare organization to remain HIPAA compliant and protect their patients, staff and reputation, the proper steps must be taken to deal with medical record shredding.

About HIPAA

HIPAA stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. It is the law that holds healthcare organizations accountable for the proper handling of patients’ medical records and information. This information is known as “PHI,” or Protected Health Information. As a healthcare organization, you must have the most serious respect for the information you’re handling. It must be completely and properly destroyed before you dispose of the files for good.

Professional Medical Record Shredding

Whether you are a medical professional in a private practice, a hospital, a walk-in clinic, an urgent care center, a surgery facility, a nursing home, a psychiatry practice or any other sort of medical or healthcare facility, you want to make sure that you are keeping medical records for the right amount of time, and then completely destroying and disposing of them in a way that nobody can ever access them.

When facilities need this kind of service, they turn to companies like PROSHRED^®. With a professional document destruction company on board, you needn’t worry about an improperly-trained employee destroying something that should’ve been kept, or overlooking the destruction of something that needed to be removed. There’s no concern about a staff member spending hours at a paper shredder feeding documents in while they could be turning their attention elsewhere.

High Technology

With a reliable professional information shredding service, you will have peace of mind as you are able to watch as your documents are destroyed. You will receive a proper Certificate of Destruction proving you are in compliance with HIPAA. Best of all, you are helping the environment when the service turns the document remains around to a recycling center to have the shredded paper turned into new products.

When your outdated medical records need to be destroyed, to keep compliant with HIPAA, don’t skimp or take unnecessary risks. Trust the most reliable professional document destruction service around—turn to PROSHRED^®.