Are You Sure Your Healthcare Organization Is Meeting All HIPAA Compliance Requirements?

Why HIPAA Compliance Matters for Your Healthcare Organization

HIPAA compliance is key for any successful business which handles personal healthcare information (PHI). HIPAA requirements include the legal and ethical practices that healthcare workers must follow, as well as the security requirements for handling patient information in paper or electronic form.

When patients share details of their health, personal lives, or finances with a medical provider of any kind, that information is required to be protected. Doctors, dentists, hospitals, emergency rooms, holistic businesses, and any other kind of medical provider are all responsible for taking the necessary steps to protect the confidential information of every patient they treat.

What Does The Law Say About HIPAA Shredding Requirements?

Medical organizations must include HIPAA-compliance training into their employee education. The medical staff must understand HIPAA-compliant methods regarding the safe collection, paper removal, shredding, and disposal of print and electronic material that contains PHI. The HIPAA training must also include instructions relevant to specific job duties, and how they maintain compliance within their responsibilities. For more detail on the regulation itself, see our overview of the HIPAA Act of 1996.

The National Association for Information Destruction (NAID) is the overseeing body of the shredding industry. Many medical professionals have found the most secure, reliable, and easiest solution for HIPAA compliance is to hire a NAID-certified document destruction specialist to handle the secure pick up, transportation and shredding of paper waste, computers, and hard-drives. NAID certification guarantees that the professional shredding companies who earn this certification meet all HIPAA requirements. Hiring a NAID-certified shredding company like Royal Document Destruction in Columbus, will take the worry about whether your business is HIPAA compliant in the handling of sensitive information.

Choosing a NAID certified provider ensures your business complies with major data protection regulations, including:

• HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act)
• FACTA (Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act)
• PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard)
• GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)

Working with a NAID certified vendor such as Royal Document Destruction satisfies your legal obligation for HIPAA compliance and is widely considered a best business practice for your secure shredding needs. To see the full scope of regulations Royal Document Destruction helps businesses navigate, visit our compliance page.

What Are The Specific HIPAA Shredding Requirements?

HIPAA regulations require healthcare organizations to take all necessary measures to protect PHI and patient privacy. These steps include properly collecting and destroying or disposing of paper documentation. Hiring Royal Document Destruction or another NAID certified shredding professional is a straightforward, reliable and cost-effective solution for all document security concerns.

A NAID certified shredding provider such as Royal Document Destruction will:

• Complete Background Checks – All employees with access to sensitive materials must pass rigorous, multi-level background screenings.
• Maintain A Rigorous Chain of Custody – Materials must be carefully tracked from the moment they are collected (e.g., in locked bins), to transportation to the secure shredding facility, thru material staging, until final destruction. Royal Document Destruction’s paper shredding process is designed around this level of tracking at every step.
• Enforce Strict Destruction Standards – The physical destruction of papers and electronic media (like hard drives) must render the data unrecoverable, meet shred size specifications, and be certified shred in a specific and rigorous time frame, which is all verified by independent NAID AAA Certification auditors.
• Provide Certificates of Destruction – The professional shredding company will provide formal documentation after the job is completed as legal proof of compliance.

What Should Be Included On A HIPAA Checklist For Your Organization?

• Appoint an individual or individuals within your practice to oversee HIPAA compliance.
• Create policies and procedures to ensure HIPAA compliance – such as written shred procedures, storage requirements, secure container locations for the safe collection of documents, a shredding schedule, and more.
• Conduct annual audits regarding PHI security to improve compliance.
• Ensure that all platforms (including EHR, telehealth platforms, client communication systems, and any other platforms that might interact with PHI) are HIPAA-compliant, and that Business Associate Agreements are in place where required.
• Implement recommended security measures to protect data, such as two-factor authentication, strong passwords, virus protection, data encryption, etc.
• Train staff members on how to handle PHI in both paper and electronic form.
• Establish a “shred everything program” for all paper waste. This eliminates each employee from deciding what should or should not be shred, which can leave a business vulnerable.
• Hire a full-service, NAID certified company for all paper shredding needs. Full-service shredding companies offer secure off-site shredding at their facility, on-site paper shredding on a mobile shred truck, hard-drive destruction, box cleanout services, file purges, product destruction, and more.

Why Hire Royal Document Destruction?

Royal Document Destruction was the first shredding company in the state of Ohio to become NAID certified, and they maintain this critical certification with yearly announced and unannounced audits of every aspect of their secure shredding processes, backed by a state-of-the-art facility and rigorous security systems.

Royal Document Destruction is a full-service shredding company in Columbus and Cincinnati, Ohio with NAID certified mobile truck shredding, off-site shredding at their secure facility, hard-drive destruction and product destruction. With over 30 years of successful shredding expertise and tens of thousands of satisfied customers, many Ohio hospitals, medical offices, dentists, doctor’s offices and more rely on Royal Document Destruction to handle their HIPAA compliant certified shredding requirements. See what customers have to say in our reviews, or learn more about why businesses choose RDD.

It is easy to get a no hassle, free quote for your healthcare organization’s shredding program. Simply call our Columbus office at 614-751-9731, or visit RDDshred.com to view all of the NAID certified destruction services available.