Category: Document Solutions

Providing solutions for all of your printing and mailing needs

Saving Trees and Securing Data

While reviewing our bills today, I noticed our Certificate of Destruction receipt from our shredding service. It now includes a nice little notice of how many trees we’ve saved by our shredding efforts.

shredding receipt
36.4 trees saved!

The receipt shows 36.4 trees saved so far this year. I’m not exactly sure how they calculate it, but I’m guessing it has something to do with the weight and/or volume of paper that we present to them for onsite shredding.

The primary purpose of our shredding efforts is to protect private data from falling into the wrong hands. Shredding helps us comply with HIPAA and PHI rules and keeps our data private.

Our internal policies state that everything we print and even documents that we receive be shredded unless we are mailing them. As an extra precaution, all shredding takes place at our facility with our staff supervising the process.

That’s good for clients…and good for trees too, it seems!

 

Now where did I put that green card?

If you send Certified Mail, you know what sort of pain it is when the attorney asks for the green card (PS Form 3811) and it can’t be found.

green card - certified mail receipt

I know, I know….we all like to put our highest paid employees on the task of filing the green cards so they are always where they need to be. Well, ok…..that’s not exactly true. In reality, they stack up on the receptionist’s desk, then they get moved to the mail room, then they may make it back to the collections department, with each department attempting to file a few whenever they get an idle moment.

Sound familiar?

Wish there was a better way? 

Wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t need to worry about hanging on to those pesky green cards? Instead, what if the green cards were electronically delivered to us with the name and address of the recipient and the signature of the person who received the certified letter. Then, what if the signature was instantly and accurately filed, just the way we like.

While we are dreaming, let’s make it one better. What if, when the green card is needed — even if it’s years down the road —  all we need to do is type in the name or the address of the person who was sent the letter and we’d immediately see the certified letter, the tracking information and the signature, all available to be printed and handed over to the person who needs it. Now that would be ideal!

And it would also be an explanation of how our Certified Mail process works.

Don’t file green cards, use LetterStream.