Hipaa and hard drives from a medical clinic

**tski72** · 07-20-2018, 02:49 PM

After reading and searching, I thought about this thread and asking all those that have clients that are in the medical field and have HIPAA clients, how much you would charge for a massive hard drive load that you have to drill on-site. I'm talking about 1k hard drives to drill. A couple of my clients that are medical type businesses have loads of them just sitting on-site and I have been talking with them to pay me instead of the largest e-waste company in the world, we all know who that is, and I have been putting together a drill press setup to do this for them, but I really don't want to shoot myself in the foot with a cheap price but I want to be reasonable because they are longtime clients that I have seasoned for years.

I have heard quotes like 5 bucks a hard drive and quotes of like 800 bucks to do like 400 drives, and all sorts.

Like I said, I don't want to kill longtime clients and loose thier business based on a little pricing mistake. If you don't want to talk about this openly, pm me and I will start a thread in the scraproom or we can just talk by pm.

Thank you all.

**miked** · 07-20-2018, 02:59 PM

I will be interested in the responses you get here along with those of your clients.

Do you intend to do the destruction on site, inside a box truck on site, use video for verification? 73, Mike

**tski72** · 07-20-2018, 11:52 PM

It would be on-site, in front of them, right outside thier dock door. I have gotten good response from the one client that I have talked to and he seemed very interested without talking money and this was directly from the owner of the company. A blanket COD would also be issued that they witnessed the destruction.

I just don't want to loose the future business that they bring me.

**hills** · 07-21-2018, 09:30 AM

Medical is usually a high end customer. Quality of workmanship is often more important to a high end customer than the actual cost to do the job.

It depends though ..... every situation is different.You have to size up your customer and figure out what's important to them.

If it's an employee of the company ( Like the head of maintenance ) he just wants the job done. The money isn't coming out of his pocket so he's not too worried about the cost. It's not his problem. Just send them the bill and the accounting dept. will pay it out.

If you're dealing with an accountant then cost is everything. They want it done on the cheap and don't care as much about the quality.

~ It's not really clear who you're dealing with. Is it the owner or one of his underlings ? If it's an underling, they might be overstepping their bounds. They may not have the authority to make a deal with you. In a case like that ... you should be talking directly with the person in charge.~

One way to get around the money question is simply to ask the decision maker what they would feel is a fair price for the job. If they don't know .... then suggest a figure. If they agree to it then it's no worries about the price.

Do an excellent job and there are no concerns about the quality of workmanship.

It's hard to go wrong that way ?

One side note: It's a breach of ethics to go peddling someone's quote. They shouldn't be talking with you about any of the quotes they've received from your competitors . That's something that should be taken into account.

**tski72** · 07-21-2018, 03:55 PM

Thank you Hills for your input. I am dealing with the Owner of the company, it's a managed service provider that deals with the medical industry only. I also have contact with the Finance Manger of the company but the talk of the hard drives started with the owner and he does really appreciate the services that I have already providing them for the last 4 years, maybe longer.

I only asked about any other quotes so I could match or beat that quote, like in any other industry, like when I was in HVAC we used to match or most of the time beat any other company for the install of heating and cooling systems.

I really don't like dealing with "bean counters" because its all about the bottom line to them, I get it, but I just don't want to shoot myself in the foot by offering the service too cheap. I was figuring at like $2.50 per hard drive up to like 500 then like a buck each there after for additional drives.

I have personally talked to another member from the forum that I deal with and I believe he was at 5 bucks per hard drive for the same type of onsite service. Just with my clients having upwards of 800 to 1k each, that is quite a high bill and I want to remain competitive in nature.

I wanted to just reach out to see want others would be doing in the situation of their locations with such a high volume of drives. One of this clients was already quoted upwards of 800 to just come out and shred about 500 drives but they were told that was just an estimate over the phone, to be competitive with that, I would have to offer like a buck a drive to them.

This is why I have tried to stick with free pickup with very minimal charges for clients to deal with, I have just tried to make the most of it from the scrap and above scrap value of things which has been hard to say the least. Other company's in my area I have seem charge anywhere from 300 to 800 to just come out and pickup e-waste from businesses along with the possibility of additional charges.

**hills** · 07-21-2018, 04:34 PM

~ Just bouncing crazy ideas around.~

Sometimes a smaller operation has a competitive advantage over the big boys. The big boys have higher operating costs so they have to charge more to make a profit. I had a painting bid a couple of years ago. The larger outfit bid five grand and i was able to do it for 3,200.00 $. I made out like a pirate on that one. The average hourly wage worked out to be a bit more than my highest labor rate on the T&M jobs.

Is there any way you could set up a production line and bang out one per minute with the drill press ? That would be 480 per day on an eight hour shift. At a buck each ...that would average out to be 60.00$/hr -or- 480.00$/day.

At 2.50 $ each ... that would work out to be 150.00$ / hr. That's almost what some doctors make.

Pull the logic boards and that would give you a bit of gravy along with the scrap value of the HDD's ?

You would probably have some laptop drives. If you hit those on the drive spindle with the blunt end of a ballpeen hammer it would completely ruin them. Some of the platters are glass so they would shatter. The metal ones would be hopelessly bent. Would that satisfy HIPPA standards ?

Just a few ideas. My area of strength is more along the lines of construction but the same principles apply. If i had the right production rig and was well organized i could bang out 60 - 90 pieces of wood cut to precision length per hour. Plenty enough to keep three men busy and stop for a coffee break every so often.

**tski72** · 07-21-2018, 05:03 PM

Well I was figuring on the drill press setup on my trailer and they would bring the boxes to the door and I would drill them, away from the board, and toss in a can, on the trailer. One hole per drive, with a good bit, I should be able to bang out at least 4 per minute, at that rate, I could probably charge .25 cents per unit, 60 bucks an hour. The laptop drives would be a throw on the ground and just leave the boards as those has some really tiny screws. All the 3.5" drives would have the boards removed once I get them back to my place.

I used to do a chisel but that gets to hard on the hands after a while. I would like to put together a punch press and just push a hole through but maybe later that would come, but a mobile shredding unit would be really nice and just shred them and sell the shredded materials, but that is a long way in the future if possible.