If you work at a healthcare facility, you are certainly aware of HIPAA laws and how they protect personal information. Since 1996, protected health information, or PHI, has been safeguarded under these laws. Eventually, all of the physical documents you have on file will need to be properly disposed of. In this article, the team at Shred Monkey will discuss the medical record shredding process.
Medical Records That Should Be Shredded
Medical records must be stored and maintained for a certain amount of time designated by HIPAA. After that, they must be shredded and destroyed. The Department of Health and Human Services requires medical records that contain certain PHI must be permanently disposed of so that they would be impossible to reconstruct. The records that contain any of the following information fall into that category:
- Names
- Addresses
- Social Security Numbers
- Phone Numbers
- Email Addresses
- Medical Records Numbers
- Account Numbers
- Health Plan Beneficiary Numbers
- Biometric Identifiers
- Full Facial Photos
- IP Addresses
- Web URLs
- Certificates/License Numbers
- Device Identifiers and Serial Numbers
- Geographic Identifiers
- Unique Identifying Numbers or Codes
Discreet Medical Record Shredding Service
When it comes to medical record shredding, there can be no corners cut. You’ll want a company that is NAID (National Association for Information Destruction) certified and performs full background checks on all employees. Additionally, it’s best that the shredding takes place at a secure facility that is under constant surveillance and undergoes regular third-party audits to ensure complete and total discretion.
Shred Monkey provides trustworthy medical record shredding services to Indianapolis, Anderson, Richmond, and Columbus. Since 1999, we have been protecting people’s personal privacy and eliminating the risk of confidential data exposure. We offer recurring document shredding services, one-time purge shredding services, hard drive destruction, and more. You can contact us today at (317) 916-1800 for a free estimate.