Government agencies generate tons of paper records every year.

A lot of those documents are loaded with sensitive information. Legal records often contain Social Security numbers of the parties involved in litigation. Personal financial data can be gleaned from other public records.

While efforts are made to protect some of this sensitive personal information, federal privacy laws that protect the privacy of medical records present unique problems for government agencies.

Muskogee County Commissioners are expected to tackle an issue today that was tabled a week ago: How to destroy medical records kept by the county health department without compromising the confidentiality of the those documents.

Lisa Howard, an administrative programs officer at the Muskogee County Health Department, said the agency is required to maintain records for years. Files kept for adult clients must be kept seven years after the last date of service. Files kept for the children served by the agency must be kept 25 years.

According to Howard, the sometimes voluminous files are logged and then tracked by the Oklahoma State Department of Health. Officials there will — every year or two — authorizes the destruction of files that have been closed and maintained for the requisite period of time.

“If you don’t get a destruction list every two years, you end up with a room full of closed files,” Howard said. “We always shredded our records, but that takes a lot of time and is hard on these little machines.”

Because the task of destroying the documents has become somewhat monumental, health department officials asked county commissioners to approve a request to approve an agreement with American Document Shredding, a local document storage and disposal company.

Commissioners tabled the request Sept. 24 to seek assurances information contained in the health department records didn’t slip into the wrong hands.

“I question how they are going to do that without seeing the documents,” District 3 Commissioner Dexter Payne said.

District 2 Commissioner Ronnie Pevehouse said there must be proper assurances given that the privacy of those medical records are not compromised as a result of being transferred into the custody of an outside third party.

Howard said those concerns have been addressed, and she is confident the privacy of health department clients will be maintained.

“The company comes to the site to do the shredding,” Howard said. “The documents are never out of our sight — a locked bin is rolled out to the truck, which has cameras that monitor the shredding.”

Officials’ concerns with the request stem from the fact this would be the first time the Muskogee County Health Department has outsourced the destruction of closed medical records. Such files already fill an entire room at the agency’s facility, and new files are opened every day.

District Attorney Larry Moore, who reviewed the proposed document shredding agreement, told commissioners he believes the agreement poses no liability risks for the county as long as steps are taken to ensure privacy.