What is PHI?
PHI stands for Protected Health Information, and is used within HIPAA to describe the type of information that must never be seen by unauthorized individuals.
PHI not only refers to medical information contained in patient files, but also to any note, document or record related to a patient’s treatment, including lab and insurance reports, billing and coding information, appointment times, notes and phone messages; anything that could divulge anything about a patient’s relationship with the practitioner.
PHI Disposal Solutions
Hiring ShredPLUS to destroy discarded PHI is a solution for lowering costs and virtually eliminating risk. Here’s how:
Lower Cost/Better Employees
If your office is really destroying everything it should, outsourcing destruction is less expensive than operating an office shredder. It literally costs less than the average fast food hamburger for most offices.
Because it is so easy, it allows employees the freedom to concentrate on their real job, without you worrying that they are neglecting it.
And, many service providers have free compliance resources that would otherwise cost you hundreds of dollars.
Compliance and Risk Management
Hiring a qualified service gives your office a record of compliance. Even if your employees shred everything they should, you have no proof that it happens regularly. A receipt from a shredding service, gives you the compliance audit trail which also is part of your HIPAA compliance.
So, not only are employees more likely to comply with the destruction program, you have the audit trail to back it up – and for less cost than destroying it yourself.
Training: The PHI Disposal Risk Eliminator
According to regulators, training employees on proper PHI disposal and giving them simple written instructions insulates healthcare organizations from fines.
Qualified destruction services have prepared turnkey programs that make this training as easy as allowing employees to watch professional video presentation on proper PHI disposal.