The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and HITECH (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act) regulate and protect Personal Health Information, or PHI.
Here, we explain HIPAA and HITECH in detail, and help you understand how to maintain and properly destroy your documents to ensure that your company or medical practice complies with these critical laws.
An individual’s health file contains more information about that person than anyone else should be able to see. If the wrong person were to get their hands on such private information, they would easily be able to take advantage. To help prevent this possibility from becoming a reality, there...
There was a lot of controversy over the Jason Pierre-Paul medical record leak back in July. Reporter Adam Schefter tweeted out a picture of the Giants DE Pierre-Paul’s medical record, stating that the professional football player had his right index finger amputated. https://twitter.com/AdamSchefter/status/618918579770146816/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw After the tweet, Schefter had quite...
Personal identifiable information is any information that can be used to identify, contact, or locate an individual, either alone or combined with other easily accessible sources to uniquely identify a person. Some PII is classified as sensitive and some information is not. PII is considered sensitive when it is...
With the changes in legislation for retaining and destroying of medical records, it’s become an important task to ensure that your practice has a plan in place, and that your employees understand what to do with and how to store this very private information. As the American Health Information...
Personal Health Information (PHI) has been protected since the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) became law in 1996. The security requirements are covered in the Privacy Rule that was finalized in 2000 then modified in 2002 and the Security Rule that was finalized in 2003. The requirements...
Are you asking yourself what is a HIPAA violation? The first thing we need to look into is what HIPAA really is. HIPAA stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Basically is what that means is that HIPAA enforces the rules that help make sure that our...
Disposing of your medical records is extremely important because you don’t want any of your information, or your patient’s information ending up in the wrong hands. Really the only way that you can make sure that your records are destroyed properly is to use medical records shredding. This will...
Bryant Longey, discovered a HIPAA violation while looking in a dumpster. The Behavioral Health Network in Springfield, Mass. had thrown away full sheet medical records. HIPAA requires all medical information to be properly destroyed. This includes both electronic and physical records. Candace Darcy, Vice President at Behavioral Health Network, said...
Commercial shredding services are only for companies with deep document stacks and even deeper pockets, right? Wrong. Commercial document shredding is a wise investment for every business, whether dropping off a few sensitive documents to an authorized collections center or scheduling regular pickups over time. Why not simply purchase...
It is not uncommon for the FBI to go dumpster diving for evidence. But in Hirim, Georgia, a town just outside of Atlanta, the trash is the crime the FBI is investigating. The problem started when a someone found a dumpster full of medical records. The dumpster was reported...
