Protected health information (PHI), under the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 was enacted by the U.S. Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996. It was originally sponsored by Sen. Edward Kennedy and Sen. Nancy Kassebaum . Title I of HIPAA protects health insurance coverage for workers and their...

 (HIPAA), is any information about health status, provision of health care, or payment for health care that can be linked to a specific individual. This is interpreted rather broadly and includes any part of a patient’s medical record

Medical record

The terms medical record, health record, and medical chart are used somewhat interchangeably to describe the systematic documentation of a single patient's medical history and care across time within one particular health care provider's jurisdiction....

 or payment history.

PHI that is linked based on the following list of 18 identifiers must be treated with special care according to HIPAA:

1. Names
2. All geographical subdivisions smaller than a State, including street address, city, county, precinct, zip code, and their equivalent geocodes, except for the initial three digits of a zip code, if according to the current publicly available data from the Bureau of the Census: (1) The geographic unit formed by combining all zip codes with the same three initial digits contains more than 20,000 people; and (2) The initial three digits of a zip code for all such geographic units containing 20,000 or fewer people is changed to 000
3. Dates (other than year) for dates directly related to an individual, including birth date, admission date, discharge date, date of death; and all ages over 89 and all elements of dates (including year) indicative of such age, except that such ages and elements may be aggregated into a single category of age 90 or older
4. Phone numbers
5. Fax numbers
6. Electronic mail addresses
7. Social Security number
   Social Security number
   In the United States, a Social Security number is a nine-digit number issued to U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and temporary residents under section 205 of the Social Security Act, codified as . The number is issued to an individual by the Social Security Administration, an independent...
   
   s
8. Medical record numbers
9. Health plan beneficiary numbers
10. Account numbers
11. Certificate/license numbers
12. Vehicle identifiers and serial numbers, including license plate numbers;
13. Device identifiers and serial numbers;
14. Web Uniform Resource Locator
    Uniform Resource Locator
    In computing, a uniform resource locator or universal resource locator is a specific character string that constitutes a reference to an Internet resource....
    
    s (URLs)
15. Internet Protocol (IP) address numbers
16. Biometric identifiers, including finger, retinal and voice prints
17. Full face photographic images and any comparable images
18. Any other unique identifying number, characteristic, or code (note this does not mean the unique code assigned by the investigator to code the data)

Further reading

• Full text of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (PDF/TXT) U.S. Government Printing Office
• What does PHI include?