Life Safety Training: 6 Standards Of The Life Safety Code

Submitted by: Greg Garner

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) lays down guidelines for the proper disposal of patient records. All covered health organizations are meant to comply with them. These guidelines are part of the Life Safety Code or LSC. Special training is provided for health care employees involved in disposing records.

Life Safety Code was created for the continual safeguarding of medical records and patient information. HIPAA approves several disposal methods for patient records, and the medical records manager of each organization must choose the one that best suits his/her organization. Once disposed, there should be no possibility of the content being retrieved. Burning, shredding, recycling, pulverizing, or pulping are approved disposal methods set by the Life Safety Code.

Healthcare organizations that are covered under HIPAA must comply with the standards of the Life Safety Code. Most organizations store the records in locked shredding containers or bins. Specialized disposal companies pick them and dispose them off in accordance with the LSC standards.

Here are six important standards that must be followed while disposing medical records. Employees will understand these standards in detail in the life safety training course.

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Ensure that all the business regulations with the vendor are accepted by both parties and are in compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Maintain paper records of everything including files related to outsourced vendor contracts.

The trash bins must be of the specified size and should hold only the set amount of waste material, which is 32 gallons. In certain hazardous areas they may be larger in size. These hazardous areas must incorporate fire safety equipment like sprinklers and barriers to prevent and stop fires.

Look for the best location to shred bins. Also ensure that the bin sizes are suitable for the locations they are kept in.

Good relations must be maintained with the environmental services, internal services, and plant operations as they offer guidance about the Life Safety Code and other issues.

To ensure that Life Safety Code compliance is as per requirements, ensure that shred bins and containers are placed in the right locations.

The responsibility of compliance to Life Safety Code may be assigned to the environmental or housekeeping departments or may even be outsourced to an external company.

The collection bins are strategically placed in appropriate locations and are built in such a way that they include several papers.

All the disposable containers are closed tightly and locked securely. Unauthorized individuals are not allowed to open containers. In addition to the disposal company, the only person who is authorized is the employee on duty who is responsible for the regular destruction of files, papers, and charts.

Life Safety Training is very important as it educates health care employee about guidelines related to destruction of medical records. To learn more, health care groups, companies and workers can go online to find businesses offering educational programs, often right over the Internet. Review their course descriptions, credentials, testimonials from happy attendees who have completed the training and become certified and other info.

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