What It Really Costs to Move and Store Unsecure Medical Records

There are stricter regulations in place for the healthcare sector to ensure patient confidentiality. Since patients’ personal information may be stored in a variety of locations (including electronic databases, physical filing cabinets, and other media), medical records staff must be extremely vigilant in maintaining patient privacy during the transfer and preservation of patient records.

Who Has the Duty to Maintain Secrecy?

Certain organisations are subject to federal privacy and security regulations like HIPAA. People, groups, and businesses that fall under HIPAA’s entity definition are all fair game. They include the following groups:

Physicians, hospitals, dental offices, nursing facilities, pharmacies, and mental health professionals

Health insurers include private insurance firms as well as group and government programmes like Medicare, Medicaid, and those offered by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Methods for the Secure Transfer of Medical Records

There are various protocols that must be followed by both the healthcare organisation and the medical records relocation and storage company when transporting medical and sensitive records:

In order to protect sensitive information, documents must never be left unattended or in an unsecured location. Only properly trained staff members should have access to patient records.
It’s important to correctly label, number, and stack boxes.
Documents should never be left unattended by authorised people.
It is the responsibility of administrators to oversee the transportation process and make sure that all policies for the safe handling and transport of records are adhered to.
Upon arrival at their destination, records must be accounted for and verified.

Safe Methods for Keeping Medical Records

A higher level of security is warranted for the medical records indexing and other sensitive information that medical practitioners keep. It is recommended that medical records, whether kept locally or outside, are:

Hiding any identifying features so as not to be a security risk
Keep it out of sight, out of mind, and out of reach on open shelves or in high-traffic locations.
Kept in a secure location that can only be entered with a physical or digital key
Manager tasked with making sure patient files are organised
Restricted to approved users only

Hiring a Reliable Medical Document Storage and Transportation Service

Any healthcare organisation, regardless of size, might face irreparable harm if patient data were compromised. The damage to the healthcare provider’s reputation, on top of any legal consequences, might be catastrophic. Healthcare providers should work with trustworthy medical records movers who store and transport patient information in accordance with all applicable state and federal privacy and security laws. They need to find the people who have broken previous records by looking for:

To guarantee the safety of medical records sorting before, during, and after a relocation, a secure chain-of-custody procedure should be implemented.
Their facility has security features like ID check-ins and restricted access.
Provide confidential shredding services for discarding old files.
Provide a unique combination of safe medical records transport and long-term storage

Value vs. Expense

A common way that cheap medical records relocation services can provide reduced prices is to skimp on security. Temporary staffing agencies like this often don’t do necessary background checks or verify references before hiring. This puts vulnerable patient data at risk for any healthcare organisation. In order to prevent identity theft, lost or altered documents, and the high financial and public relations expenses that come with litigation, healthcare organisations must ensure that the record moving and storage provider they use complies with all HIPAA rules.

Never choose a company to relocate and store your medical records unless they can guarantee the highest level of security during the entire process, from packing and unpacking to scanning and destroying.