What is HIPAA?

If you work in the healthcare field, you’ve undoubtedly heard of HIPAA–the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. HIPAA compliance is a big deal nowadays, with it being an integral part of being a credible business. Like many fields, healthcare has undergone large scale digitization. Increasingly, medical documents are being processed, transferred, and viewed online. Whether through online applications or being able to view lab results online, much of your personal information sits on servers around the world.

You might be led into thinking that because of the digital age and the convenience that it brings that paperwork is on its way out, we can assure you this is not likely. There is still a great deal of paperwork being completed as well as decades of old archives that exist from the years prior.

Hard Drive Destruction for HIPAA Compliance

Because many healthcare administration offices are switching to using EHR, there are many factors at play when trying to keep the personal information of clients safe. For example, it is not uncommon for successful businesses and clinics to move offices as they scale their equipment up or their options become more plentiful. When it comes to EHR, healthcare administrators have a choice of using cloud-based or locally hosted EHR systems. Many organizations use a locally hosted EHR–which means the servers contain all the information in house. When those hard drives in the servers must be swapped out or upgraded, they have to be disposed of properly.

Shred With Us offers hard drive and electronic media destruction services. Many people do not know that information on hard drives can be recovered, so disposing of them properly is an important and often neglected facet of HIPAA compliance.

Paper Shredding for HIPAA Compliance

Of course, the more common issue is that despite the fact that many medical administrations use EHR, they have a significant amount of paperwork burden that periodically must be relieved.

Consider that much of healthcare and insurance primarily deals with the elderly–a population that is significantly less likely to fill out applications online or complete any processes online. Because of this, there is still a need for the availability of paperwork so that those who are not computer savvy can still tend to their needs.

As we alluded to in the opening of this article, a lot of paperwork still gets done, which means that there are many documents that require shredding periodically after they have been digitally archived. Not only does this free up office space but it also ensures that the privacy of your patients and customers is maintained in a HIPAA compliant fashion.

Paper Shredding Company South Carolina

Shred With Us is the first choice for many South Eastern businesses and entities. We have served countless businesses in the medical, legal, retail, and educational fields. We have also assisted government agencies and municipalities that require someone they can trust to handle the most sensitive and classified information.

There are many aspects to being compliant with document destruction laws that depend on state, region, and city. We are familiar with all of them.

Let Shred With Us handle your document destruction so that you can have the peace of mind required to focus on growing and maintaining your business!