Your HR folder knows too much.

A doctor's note arrives by email, gets forwarded twice, printed once, and filed in the personnel record. Federal law has required medical information to sit on separate forms and in separate files since 1992, electronic files included [1]. Sidefile keeps those documents outside the personnel record, logs every access by name, and produces the proof on demand. Somewhere in your organisation a doctor's note is sitting in an inbox that three people can open, and nobody can say which three.

Map where our files live See the demonstration Sign in to Sidefile

United States
Separation enforced in the database
Software, not a law firm

Why this becomes expensive

01
The obligation is thirty years old. Your practice is a shared inbox.
Separate forms, separate files, confidentiality maintained, and the EEOC has confirmed the rule applies to electronic records exactly as it does to paper [1]. Most employers satisfy it with a folder name and a habit.
02
Accommodation litigation is at a record, and rising fast.
Disability accommodation lawsuits filed in federal court reached 6,796 in 2025, a 42% increase and the highest on record [2]. In the same year the EEOC secured $660 million for 17,680 people, roughly four fifths of it before any lawsuit was filed [6].
03
The question in discovery is not whether you complied. It is whether you can show it.
An employer that has to show it engaged in the interactive process is showing it from its own records. Without a contemporaneous one, the showing rests on recollection [3]. Defending a single employment claim costs around $75,000 when it settles before trial, and $175,000 to $250,000 if it does not [4]. The exposure is rarely the accommodation decision. It is the missing record of who saw what.

6,796

Disability accommodation lawsuits filed in federal court in 2025, up 42% and the highest on record [2].

$75,000

Typical cost of defending one employment claim that settles before trial, and $175,000 to $250,000 if it reaches trial [4].

61%

Share of workplace accommodations that cost the employer nothing at all [7]. The expense was never the accommodation. It was the paperwork around it.

Four situations this fits

Every opening of a medical document is written down. Including the one that was refused.

The ledger is append-only. The employee reads the same list from their phone, which is the part nobody else offers, and the part that changes how the workforce receives the whole system.

Access ledger, extract. Illustrative record built from real case patterns.
Timestamp	Actor and role	Object	Action	Purpose recorded	Employee sees it
03/11 09:42	A. Reyes · Occupational health	cert-2026-0311.pdf	opened	Restriction review following first certification	yes
03/11 09:58	A. Reyes · Occupational health	work_capacity	wrote	Functional capacity published to the supervisor. The certification itself was not.	yes
03/12 14:07	J. Lund · HR generalist	work_capacity	opened	Accommodation file opened, interactive process started	yes
03/14 08:19	T. Bauer · Direct supervisor	cert-2026-0311.pdf	refused	Attempted from a link forwarded through a shared inbox. Refused at the database layer, not at the screen. Logged, and the attempt is visible to the employee and to counsel.	yes
04/09 16:30	J. Lund · HR generalist	accommodation_decision	wrote	Granted: seated picking station, review at six months. Decision recorded with its date, its author and its stated reason.	yes
11/14 10:02	External counsel · Legal hold	diagnosis, provider	released	Released under a named legal hold, with the matter number recorded. A release is an event in the ledger like any other. It cannot happen quietly.	yes

Where do your employees' medical documents live right now?

The twelve question map runs in the browser. Nothing typed leaves the page, and the result is the list of stores and the routes into them.

Open the medical file map

Deliberately below the leave platforms, because we do one narrow thing.

At $1.75 per employee per month, an employer with 600 people pays about $12,600 a year, under a sixth of the cost of defending one employment claim that settles before trial [4]. That is the only ratio worth putting in front of a general counsel.

Firewall Review

$6,500 one-off · two weeks

Written map of where medical documents live today
Inboxes, shared drives, HRIS, ticketing, print
Who can reach each store, and by which route
Gap against the separation requirement, in writing
Commissioned by counsel as often as by the employer

Platform

$1.75 per employee per month · floor $9,600 / yr

Separate medical store with row-level policies
Named access ledger, visible to the employee
$1.40 from 501 employees · $1.10 above 2,000
Interactive Process File module, +$0.75
Implementation $4,000 to $12,000

Evidence Pack

$2,500 per matter

One matter, reconstructed and sealed
Access ledger and interactive process log
Available without a subscription
Legal Hold & Export module, $6,000 / yr
Included for subscribers on the annual plan

Annual, paid in advance. No third party security attestation has been completed, and none is in progress. We will say so plainly here until one has. A business associate agreement is available where required. Bundled with Counterline: 15% off both subscriptions under a single master agreement.

All prices, both products

Ask the one question nobody wants written down.

Ask us one question: where do our employees' medical documents live right now? Two weeks, a fixed fee, and a written answer your counsel can use. Every store, every route into it, every role that can reach it, and the gap against the separation requirement. Most organisations already know the answer and would rather not write it down. That is precisely why it is worth doing before someone else does it for you.

Book a Firewall Review +1 702 359 4026

Reviews are conducted under a mutual non-disclosure agreement. We never ask for, and never receive, employee medical content during a review.

References

[1] Separate forms and separate files for medical information, electronic records included, ADA Title I and 29 C.F.R. 1630.14(b)(1). EEOC, informal discussion letter on confidentiality of medical records. Back to citation
[2] Lex Machina, 2026 Employment Litigation Report. Disability accommodation lawsuits filed in federal court in 2025, 6,796, up approximately 42% year over year. Back to citation
[3] The legal characterization of an undocumented interactive process is left for counsel. What this page states is narrower: the employer is the party that has to evidence the process it ran. Back to citation
[4] Jon Hyman, How much does it cost to defend an employment lawsuit?, Workforce. Defense through discovery and summary judgment $75,000 to $125,000; through a jury verdict $175,000 to $250,000. Back to citation
[6] US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, FY 2025 Agency Performance Report, released 6 April 2026. $660 million secured for 17,680 individuals, of which $528 million through the pre-litigation enforcement process. Back to citation
[7] Job Accommodation Network, Costs and Benefits of Accommodation, employer survey January 2019 to December 2023. Of employers providing cost information, 61% reported the accommodation cost nothing; 33% a one time expense with a median of $300. Back to citation