Hipaa Document Shredding: What Is It?

Document shredding is a very important part of many different areas of business now. There are some areas where it has become standard practice, in order to protect the interests of clients and companies. There are other areas where it is actually the law. While there are certainly business records retention practices in place at most health care facilities, there are also very strong policies in place to ensure that the majority of documents are shredded at some point during their life. This is because of a series of laws which are known as HIPAA.

HIPAA stands for the health insurance portability and accountability act. This is a grouping of laws which are meant to protect the private information of people that are seeking help at health care facilities of any kind. There are laws in this country which make sure that the information of each citizen still belongs to them even when they might be forced to provide it to another entity for a specific purpose. These laws are meant to protect those that might need to provide certain pieces of their private information in order to receive health care.

HIPAA covers all types of companies which work within the medical industry. It is not just a policy which affects hospitals. It also covers private doctors' offices, medical clinics, dentists, eye doctors, chiropractors, massage therapists, physiotherapists, and more. Essentially, no matter exactly what area of medicine they practice in, if it is apt to describe a client as a patient rather than a customer, it is almost assured that HIPAA is going to apply to that company's documentation practices.

HIPAA also covers almost every type of information that all those patients might provide to those facilities. It covers information like address and contact information. Any insurance information which needs to be given for coverage purposes is included. Also, lab and test results and information regarding patient care is also part of the act.

HIPAA is interesting in that the act itself does not actually explain to you, step by step, what has to be done to destroy these types of pieces of information. Instead, it creates a law that states that each of these types of facilities must have a written policy in place which dictates how they will handle these document destruction requirements. This generally includes the use of a third party shredding party that will handle the document destruction needs.