Medical Records Disposal Practices – Reviewing their importance

Medical Records Disposal Practices –  We offer document shredding services that are professional, convenient, and reliable. 

Any business that uses or creates client medical records is required by law to follow stringent privacy rules set forth by HIPAA. Part of this responsibility requires that health facilities take steps to safeguard medical records and protect the information contained in them at all costs. 

In addition to where you store this data in-house, it’s also essential to understand what to do with the documents when it comes time to toss them out. Like medical waste disposal to prevent biohazardous and potentially infectious waste from harming the public and environment, certified professionals must handle this waste. 

The problem with throwing these documents into the regular trash is that fraudsters are already looking for places where they can locate critical data like birthdays and social security numbers to perpetrate attacks. The only way to ensure patient records are never seen by the wrong people is to shred them into indecipherable pieces.

We offer document shredding services that are professional, convenient, and reliable. 

As we near the end of another calendar year, we thought it would be an excellent time to review some of the most important medical records disposal practices you should have in place at your facility. 

You can assist your entire staff with participating in these mandates by offering formal training on the disposal rules and requirements as well as keeping clearly labeled bins by workstations stating the container is for “patient record disposal ONLY.”

In addition to adding these labeled bins, you should also ensure there is someone to physically monitor the areas by doing random inspections to ensure nothing with patient data on it has been disposed of in those non-compliant bins.

Of course, today, not all patient data and records are on paper – there is also a lot of digital data out there. You’ll need to ensure you’re protecting electronic records and destroying them in compliance as well. That means any sensitive files on hard drives, EKG machines, and even X-Rays will all need to be destroyed. Shredding provides and ultimate destruction.

Partner with Legal Shred to ensure your facility is always in compliance so you can focus on what’s in front of you while we take care of the removal and destruction. Call for services today! 

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Medical Records Disposal

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