Hipaa Storage Of Paper Medical Records

Physical safeguards are defined in the hipaa security series as physical measures policies and procedures to protect a covered entity s systems and related building and equipment from natural and environmental hazards and unauthorized intrusion.

Hipaa storage of paper medical records.

Do you manage your backups internally or is it time to consider looking outside your practice for hipaa compliant backup storage. Hacking information doesn t just happen to digital information. No open shelves in a patient or research subject area. Medical records and phi must be stored where there is controlled access we recommend that medical records and phi stored in hallways that are accessible by unauthorized individuals should be in locked cabinets.

The hipaa guidelines for medical records do not exclusively apply to medical records that are created stored or transmitted electronically. Record the security steps that are taken and why they were taken as relevant. Here is how you move forward. Paper records and electronic records need to be treated the same don t forget about the paper.

All medical records are subject to the hipaa privacy rule and the same considerations should be given to maintaining the integrity of paper medical records and preventing the unauthorized disclosure of phi. Maintaining hipaa compliance across digital paper records hipaa compliance must remain a top priority even as organizations utilize printers scanners and faxes to monitor different types of. Set up security protections against the risks discovered. In order to maintain hipaa compliance with your paper record storage you need to think about physical safeguards.

What to do about electronic storage. No open shelves in a hallway that allows access to individuals not authorized to access those medical records and phi. All hipaa compliant storage should be assessed for any risks on a regular basis. Assess risks to the data potential results of related attacks and how likely they are to occur.

Your emr may not take up the physical office space that your paper records once did but the demand for storage space for these files will only grow.