HIPAA Compliant Document Shredding

Serving Washington, DC, Virginia, & Maryland

The HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) was signed into federal law back in 1996 as a way to fight fraud and abuse within the health insurance industry. It required that all health care organizations within the U.S. put into place safeguards that would help to prevent both intentional and unintentional use of patient health information since the Protected Health Information law requires medical professionals to keep patient medical information private. Here at Modern Image, we can provide HIPAA compliant document shredding to any number of medical practices, including dental practices, hospitals, surgery centers, family physician practices, pharmacies, nursing homes and more.

Who Does HIPAA Affect?

The HIPAA concerns all information that relates to the past, present and future physical or mental health of a patient as well as the past, present and future payments for the provision of their healthcare. This can include everything from patient histories and patient insurance information to patient notes and forms. The law requires that all healthcare providers have documented policies that prove that measures are being taken in order to protect the private information of their patients.

How Can We Help You Stay Compliant?

There are going to be cases in which you need to discard old medical records. Maybe they are out of date, or maybe you are having your documents scanned and digitized so that patient medical records will be easier to find and access. Either way, you’ll need to find a secure way to get rid of your old documents. HIPAA requires that you destroy all medical documents before you dispose of them and that you can provide proof that you have done so in order to protect the privacy of your patients.

So how can we help to ensure that you are compliant with HIPAA? First of all, we have a lot of experience handling delicate documents for shredding. We have provided both government agencies as well as medical facilities with document shredding services since 2006 and we always ensure that our staff is properly trained and educated to handle sensitive material. Unlike many other document shredding services, we will also come to you in order to pick up your medical documents and to take them to our shredding facility. These documents will never be left unattended, from the pick up to the time they are in transit to when they are shredded. We will securely shred your documents per your instructions, making sure that they can not be pieced back together after they have been destroyed. Once the shredding process has been completed, we will provide you with a Certificate of Destruction as proof that you securely destroyed your medical papers before disposal.

If you have medical documents of any kind that need to be disposed of, then you’ll want to make sure you use a reputable document shredding service that will properly and securely destroy your documents to maintain compliance with HIPAA. For a free estimate, be sure to contact us at Modern Image today.