Patient paperwork doesn’t stay in one place. Intake forms start at the front desk, charts move through exam rooms, insurance and billing paperwork collects in the back office, and old records end up in the file room. This guide walks through medical records shredding Phoenix medical and dental practices can organize room by room, so every piece of patient paperwork has a secure way out.
Assured Document Destruction opened its Phoenix location in 2009 and operates from 930 S. 67th Avenue. The company is NAID AAA Certified, licensed, bonded and insured, and serves Phoenix and the surrounding metro area.
Mapping Patient Paperwork From the Front Desk to the File Room
Most practices don’t have one shredding problem. They have several small ones in different rooms, each with its own kind of paper. Assured’s secure shredding containers come in several styles, so each area can have the right fit.
Front Desk and Checkout
The front desk handles intake forms, copies of insurance cards and printed schedules all day long. The Shredinator fits under a desk, holds up to 60 pounds and has a tamper-proof lid, so staff can throw paper away without leaving their station.
Exam Rooms and Provider Offices
Printed lab reports, visit notes and referral letters often end up in provider offices. Executive cabinets come in Gray, Espresso, Cherry or Maple finishes and hold 70 to 80 pounds, so they blend into a patient-facing hallway or office.
Billing Office and File Room
Insurance and billing paperwork builds up quickly. For billing departments and records areas, 64-gallon bins hold up to 250 pounds and 96-gallon bins hold up to 350 pounds. Both have internal and external locking systems and a molded paper slot with a deflector to prevent tampering.
Scheduled Shredding Service That Keeps Containers From Overflowing
Containers only work if someone empties them on time, and a scheduled shredding service [https://www.shreddingphx.com/scheduled-shredding/] takes care of that. Assured provides free locked security containers for your office, and its security specialists cross-cut shred the contents on-site at your practice.
Each shred comes with a Certificate of Destruction, so your practice builds a running record of proper disposal. After shredding, the material goes to Assured’s secure facility, where it’s compressed into 1,500-pound bales and, when possible, recycled into low-grade products like paper towels, tissue and napkins.
On-Site Medical Records Shredding Phoenix Staff Can Watch
With on-site shredding [https://www.shreddingphx.com/on-site-shredding/], the destruction happens at your practice in Assured’s mobile shredding trucks, and you can watch your documents being destroyed. Patient records don’t need to be transported anywhere first, and on-site service can often be scheduled for the same day or the next day.
Assured’s Phoenix fleet includes nine shred trucks, and the company says its trucks can shred up to 10,000 pounds of paper per hour. That helps when a practice has a large backlog to clear.
Who Handles Your Patient Records
Assured’s regulatory compliance page notes that health care entities generally must ensure that only approved personnel handle protected health information. It also explains that the HIPAA Security Rule has applied to Business Associates since February 2010.
Assured’s security specialists are background checked, drug screened, uniformed and security cleared, and they wear visible ID badges. The company also makes a Business Associate Agreement available on its website, which your practice can review before service begins.
Old Charts, X-Rays and Other Non-Paper Items
Every practice eventually needs to clear out charts that have reached the end of their retention period. One-time shredding [https://www.shreddingphx.com/one-time-shredding/] handles bulk clean-outs of stored documents, either on-site at your location or off-site at Assured’s secure facility. A Certificate of Destruction is provided.
Patient information isn’t only on paper. Assured’s non-paper destruction service [https://www.shreddingphx.com/non-paper-destruction/] covers items like X-rays, labels, binders and plastic key cards, along with media such as hard drives, data tapes, VHS tapes and floppy disks. Materials are properly disposed of or incinerated when needed, and a Certificate of Destruction is provided.
Smaller Batches at the Drop-Off Facility
If you only have a few boxes, drop-off shredding at the Phoenix facility is available Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. It costs $10 per 1.2-cubic-foot box, about the size of a copy paper box. Staples, paper clips, rubber bands and file folders can stay in, but three-ring binders, sheet covers and large metal items should be removed first.
Retiring Office Computers and Devices
Practices replace front desk computers, provider laptops and phones over time, and those devices can hold years of patient information. Assured notes that formatting or degaussing a drive is not enough for secure disposal, and that a single hard drive can contain a warehouse full of confidential information.
For hard drive destruction in Phoenix, Assured runs a dedicated on-site hard drive shredding truck [https://www.shreddingphx.com/hard-drive-destruction/] that can shred 2,000 hard drives per hour. A technician shreds each piece of media individually while you watch, and a Certificate of Destruction is provided when the job is complete. The service also covers smartphones, cell phones and flash drives.
Your patients trust your practice with some of the most personal information they have. A plan that gives every room, every old chart and every retired device a secure way out keeps that trust intact.
To set up scheduled shredding, plan a chart purge or arrange on-site hard drive destruction, call 602-759-5103 or contact Assured Document Destruction today [https://www.shreddingphx.com/contact-us/].
