In 1996, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) passed into law. The main intent of the law was to protect a family’s health coverage benefits for workers and their immediate family when they change or lose their jobs.
Part of the act, included a privacy rule, that cloaked a patient’s medical record with significant privacy protections and severe penalties for violations. It took five years to carry out this section of the act, by 2001; every medical facility from doctor’s offices, urgent care centers, ambulatory surgical centers, laboratories, University Hospital Centers, among many other health providers implemented a patient privacy plan that includes the destruction of documents. California is one of 45 states that have tightened the HIPAA privacy provisions with state provisions applicable to California Medical records. A glitch in medical record destruction can result in costly fines – an expense, no hospital, clinic, or physician office wants.
Next to financial, or in some cases ahead of financial information, personal health information is the most personal and private information about an individual. Appropriate laws are in place for making sure medical records stay private. However, health care providers are unique; they rank among the highest producers of confidential documents of almost any industry except perhaps espionage. Disposing of unneeded and outdated paper information is an enormous task.
Hospitals, clinics, laboratories, and physician offices are in the business of making sick people well and chronically ill people comfortable. Few other industries have embraced computerization the way health care has done. Nevertheless, the amount of paper and film documentation produced in a health care facility is enormous. Those that destroy documentation themselves essentially are beginning a new business; running a health care facility is hard enough, so outsourcing document destruction to SoCal makes good business sense.
We treat all of our client’s confidential documents that are ready for destruction with all the care possible. Our document shredding staff come to your business location in full uniform and carry Triple A certification from the National Association for Information Destruction (NAID). Our membership in NAID extends protection to you in the event of a HIPAA Audit or if there are questions about one patient file or group of files. Documentation of NAID guidelines helps. In addition, since we are NAID members, we get compliance changes and notifications that we immediately broadcast to our clients, and we work with you to insure compliance. We strengthen our protection by bonding our staff and carrying high value insurance.
Under HIPAA, the term for protected documents is Protected Health Information, (PHI). 45 CFR 164.530 (c) calls for specific methods of destruction – leaving the information in dumpster is a violation.
Approved destruction methods include:
SoCal Shredding keeps up on the law, trains its disposal technicians to destroy documents correctly, has the proper equipment to do the job right, and does it at your site under your supervision. Call us for a quote and further details of how we benefit your hospital. Contact SoCal Shred today our number is 877-747- 3391.
