Welcome to properPHIdisposal

This website was created for professional medical and dental administrative leaders to do the following:

• Define Protected Health Information (PHI) in the new HIPAA.
• Explain the challenges related to discarding PHI on a daily basis.
• Provide information and resources that will protect their organizations from the new mandatory fines recently added to HIPAA for improper disposal of PHI.

PHI Disposal Facts:

FACT: Employee training, written policies and destroying discarded paper records are included in the top ten data protection compliance recommendations. Read More…

FACT: Analysis of hard drives bought on the second hand market showed that a significant number still contained personal information despite obvious indications that the owner had tried to overwrite the information themselves. Read More… 

FACT: Neither pressing the “Delete” button or reformatting removes data from a computer hard drive. It only erases the index and conventional recovery utilities can still easily access the information unless the hard drive is properly sanitized or destroyed. Read More…

FACT: PHI is considered any information about a patient, including diagnosis, treatment, billing, or personal information associated with treatment. Read More…