What should I do to protect PHI on paper?

One area where the college is particularly vulnerable for violating the incidental disclosures measure is in the transfer of paper documents from department to department. Currently, many documents containing PHI (like routing slips or patient billing) are transmitted in stacks of paper that are often left unattended in staff members’ inboxes or in the faculty/staff mailroom. While transferring these documents to another staff member is allowed as part of normal healthcare operations, leaving open documents unattended in a public workplace does not provide reasonable protection for the PHI. We are currently investigating the use of specially designed closable interoffice envelopes to transmit PHI to address this concern to avoid a potential violation. Stay tuned to future announcements about the implementation of this new protocol.