Governments Use Document Imaging to Manage Paper Documents

http://www.govtech.com/pcio/386297

Medical Records found in garbage truck/ landfill

http://www.wsfa.com/global/story.asp?s=10570404

Shredding Can Save You From Identity Theft

Got any secrets?

Sure you do. How about your bank and credit card statements? Personal bills, canceled or blank checks, investment information and financial statements? And, then there are medical records, income tax records and credit reports.

Do you simply toss them in the trash when you no longer need them for your records? If so, you need to change your modus operandi. Start shredding.

Anything you wouldn’t feel comfortable having someone pick up and read, you should shred, says Jerry Haas, vice president of sales and marketing for American Document Destruction Corp. in Tampa, Fla.

Criminals need very little information to steal your identity. With your Social Security number they can apply for credit cards, cellular phones, loans, bank accounts, apartments and utility accounts.

Garbages hold a plethora of information. Once your Social Security number or an account number hits the Dumpster, your identity is floating among the refuse, just waiting to be stolen. Shredding is a minimal inconvenience and minor expense compared to its alternative — becoming an identity theft victim.

FTC is getting tough — shred or else

The Federal Trade Commission issued the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act in 2003, a law aimed at minimizing the risk of identity theft and consumer fraud. In November 2004, the FTC added the FACTA Disposal Rule to enforce the protection and disposal of sensitive consumer data.

The FACTA Disposal Rule says that “any person who maintains or otherwise possesses consumer information for a business purpose” must destroy discarded consumer information, whether in paper or electronic form.

Who must comply? Simply put, virtually everyone. Any business (whether employing one or thousands) using consumer information in its everyday operations or storing personal data as a business, such as banks, lenders, insurers, auto dealers, real estate agents, employers and record management companies, must safeguard consumer information. The law also applies to service providers that destroy information, from shredders, recyclers, waste management or technology disposal companies.

The disposal rule offers business owners a few choices. They must burn, pulverize or shred paper documents and completely erase or destroy all electronic media. Or, they can contract a third-party information-destruction company.

“The most important impact of the disposal rule is the attention it sheds on the problem of identity theft and proper information destruction,” says Bob Johnson, executive director of the National Association for Information Destruction, a paper-shredding industry trade group.

“Many larger institutions, such as banks, investment companies or hospitals, have been working toward the issue of protecting consumer information, but too many smaller businesses, from auto dealerships, furniture stores and apartment landlords, have been flying under the radar.

“As a matter of fact, every household should have a shredder to destroy personal documents,” he adds. “I see them as being as common as the washing machine and dishwasher.”

It’s quite a list

Financial documents aren’t the only items that should be destroyed rather than tossed out with the trash. Mobile Document Shredding in Lewisville, Texas, provides a list that includes:

• Bank information
• Budgets
• Canceled or blank checks.
• Credit card offers
• Credit card information.
• Employee evaluations
• Financial statements
• Income tax records
• Insurance coverage
• Investment information
• Legal papers
• Medical records
• Personal bills

If you work out of a home office, you’ll want to destroy even more. Consider accounts payable and receivable, bidding strategies, blueprints, building and computer access codes, customer lists, estimates and invoices.

Next, you need to decide whether to buy a shredder or hire a shredding service.

The wonderful world of shredders

Shredders come in many shapes and sizes and sell at a variety of prices. A quick survey of the Web sites of three office-supply stores and two department stores that sell shredders show that prices range from $20 to $2,650.

“Basically, there are two types of shredders sold for household use: a strip-cut shredder and a crosscut shredder,” says David Bristow, general manager of Automatic Response Systems, a company in Berkeley, Calif., specializing in shredder sales, service and document destruction.

• Strip-cut: The most basic shredder, it strips paper into shreds of various thickness. It is the easiest shredder to maintain. “A strip-cut shredder is more of a deterrent than security,” says Bristow.
• Crosscut: The crosscut shredder dices paper by cutting it in two directions and provides better security, says Bristow, but it requires more maintenance and handles fewer sheets of paper at a time than a strip-cut machine. You need to regularly oil a crosscut shredder to help it work better and last longer. Bristow recommends oiling once after every 20 to 30 minutes of use.

When selecting a shredder, consider:

• The speed at which it operates.
• The security level provided by the size of the shred.
• Whether the size of the opening will accommodate the paper you have.
• How many sheets of paper it will handle in one pass.

You also need to consider the condition of the documents you need to destroy. The finer the cut, the fussier the machine. Machines that make fine shreds dislike a diet of staples and paper clips. To prolong the longevity of any shredder, Bristow recommends removing these objects.

What about hiring a shredding service? If you have a lot of shredding, it might be easier to hire a shredding service to do it.

So what do you get?

Shredding services will either do the work in a truck on your property or remove your papers to a shredding facility. People in the business say it is more secure to have them shredded on your property because it assures they are illegible when they are transported.

You can schedule shredding service at regular intervals, or take collected papers and electronic data in when you clean out a filing cabinet of old records. Most companies will provide waste-paper storage bins for their regular clients. Prices increase with the size of the job. Some companies charge by the pound, some by the volume.

American Document Destruction Corp. bills by the pound — about 16 cents per pound, Haas says. But the price per pound varies depending on quantity (the more shredding, the lower the per-pound price) and accessibility (the harder it is to get to, the higher the price).

“If you’re only going to have 10 or 15 pounds in a month, if you’re going to have half a box of paper,” Haas says, “it’s just not worth having a shredding service.”

EHR Funding in the Stimulus Package

President Obama has given doctors a $19 billion incentive to convert their paper records to digital files. Medical record scanning was marked as a high priority initiative in the $800 billion stimulus package that passed last month.

The president is clearly sending a message to medical practices and hospitals that it is time to convert their paper files to Electronic Medical Records (EMR). It is a priority for President Obama because it will help healthcare providers and insurance companies easily share information about patients.

The government will be providing grants to individual practices to help offset the cost. As news of these grants spreads, we are seeing a dramatic increase in the requests for scanning service.

Over the next few years you are going to see more and more doctors typing on the computer instead of writing on a chart.

“The president is clearly sending a message to medical practices and hospitals that it is time to convert their paper files to Electronic Medical Records (EMR),” says Steve Hastert, president of Record Nations. Record Nations helps medical offices scan their records. “It is a priority for President Obama because it will help healthcare providers and insurance companies easily share information about patients.”

The benefit of EMRs is reduced overhead in the healthcare system and a reduction in misdiagnoses. With $600 billion in medical spending the federal government would be the biggest beneficiary of increased efficiencies.

While many leading hospitals have already scanned documents into a digital format, thousands of smaller doctors’ offices have not made the switch. Most cite the fact that scanning medical files is a significant expense and the cost is difficult to pass on to patients.

“The government will be providing grants to individual practices to help offset the cost,” says Hastert. “As news of these grants spreads, we are seeing a dramatic increase in the requests for scanning service.”

The incentives in the plan include $2 billion in grants to individual physicians in the amount of $44,000 to $64,000. This can be used for document scanning and electronic document management systems. Hospitals can qualify for up to $11 million in incentives. The remaining $17 billion is for Medicaid and Medicare payment increases to offices using the system.

The law also establishes penalties for practices that choose not to employ e-health records. In 2014 there will be decreased Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements for practices that have not implemented EMRs.

“Over the next few years you are going to see more and more doctors typing on the computer instead of writing on a chart,” predicted Hastert.

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Records Management Services (RMS) is a full service records management center. We are NW Florida’s largest commercial document storage center.  We provide document and data storage services to a broad variety of both public and private agencies.  Vital records are indexed into our computerized tracking system and then placed into our climate-controlled facility.

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Immediate access to your information is just a phone call away.  Files can be delivered by our couriers, fax machine, overnight mail or the Internet.  We will even purge the records from your active filing system, box, index and transport them to our warehouse for you.

We truly want to earn your business. Our records destruction and storage programs can certainly provide value, reduce liability, and free up expensive office space. Call today and find out how we can help you tame that “paper tiger” that’s devouring your most precious commodity…time!