Shredding is solution to confidentiality concerns
January 1, 1998 3 minutes read
Shredding is solution to confidentiality concerns
It’s under lock and key’
It was the papers carelessly dropped in the doctor’s mail room that set off alarm bells. That, and an upcoming inspection by the Oakbrook Terrace, IL-based Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.
"We were seeing patient information just thrown on the floor. The doctors look at it, and they toss it," says Richard Szymborski, medical records manager at Edward Hospital in Naperville, IL, a suburb of Chicago. "With the Joint Commission coming, it heightened the awareness on confidentiality and we were looking around ourselves to find confidentiality breaches. Confidentiality is one of their big target areas."
But the kind of careless disregard for sensitive patient information is a thing of the past now that the hospital has implemented a program for shredding confidential documents from the medical records department and doctors’ mail that previously would have been tossed in the trash, Szymborski says.
Protecting patient information, no matter what format, is an important issue around hospitals these days, says Bo Pearson, account representative at Kwik-Shred, a document shredding company in Broadview, IL. "Within a hospital environment, there are a lot of vendors and janitors wandering around. Our company provides lockable containers. When somebody has a document that they want shredded, it’s under lock and key."
And outside the hospital, "You’d be surprised that so many people know about people going through dumpsters and looking for information in places," he says.
Under the shredding program initiated at Edward last fall, locked boxes were placed in the doctors’ mail room and the medical records department.
In the medical records department, each employee has a blue recycling basket. At the end of the day, they deposit documents to be disposed of in the shredding bin, Szymborski says.
The grey boxes about 30 inches tall, 22 inches wide, and 20 inches deep are emptied weekly. Shredding company staff are the only ones with a key. Each week they exchange a full nylon bag inside the locked containers for an empty one.
The papers are then taken to a shredding truck waiting outside in the hospital parking lot, which shreds the hospital documents on the premises. That, Szymborski says, was an important consideration for the hospital.
"It’s a way of being sure of confidentiality, and that it’s not being carted off somewhere. Once it leaves here I don’t even have to think about it," he says.
Shred sensitive documents on the premises
The papers are then taken to a recycling center.
A typical shredding truck about the size of a moving van can destroy between 1,000 and 1,400 pounds of paper per hour, or about 35 boxes. The shredder, hydraulically operated by the power of the truck’s engine, creates paper bits the size of nickels and dimes, Pearson says. The pieces are then compacted and sealed in a container.
The trucks typically make several stops each day; banks and hospitals are the biggest customers of Kwik-Shred. To further guarantee confidentiality, "Everybody’s paper is mixed up in the back," Pearson says.
Once the hospital’s papers have been shredded, the shredding company issues a "certificate of destruction," as proof that the job was done. The certificate contains the customer’s account number, a number identifying which truck did the shredding, which driver, plus the arrival and departure date and time, Pearson says.
"It gives you a nice tracking of what was destroyed. That’s the proof that we’re not just driving off with it," he explains.
Discarded X-rays are done on an as-needed basis, separately from paper shredding. The X-rays, along with microfiche, are then taken to a landfill.
Shredders will also work directly with records storage facilities to routinely shred medical records after the appropriate retention period has been met. "A lot of times we work directly with a storage company and do one cleanup. That saves them a lot of money," Pearson says.
At Edward Hospital, staff seem to be cooperating, Szymborski says. "From what I see, the doctors are getting better" at disposing of confidential documents properly.
For more information, contact Richard Szymborski, Manager, Medical Records, Edward Hospital, Naperville, IL. Telephone: (630) 527-3094. Or Bo Pearson, Account Representative, Kwik-Shred, Broadview, IL. Telephone: (800) 99-SHRED.
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