What Is Protected Health Information?
According to a recent study, the leading cause of healthcare data breaches isn’t hackers, but rather negligence from individuals authorized to access and share PHI. That’s why protecting PHI is so important—whether you work in the healthcare industry or have a hand in your employees’ health reimbursement arrangements. This article will help you understand what qualifies as PHI and how to protect it properly.
What Is Protected Health Information?
In simple terms, protected health information (PHI) is personal identifiable data that appears in medical records or conversations between healthcare staff about a patient’s treatment. It includes everything from demographic information to test and laboratory results, mental health conditions, insurance details, and even social security numbers. The US law governing PHI is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). PHI must be safeguarded at all times.
Whether a particular piece of information is considered PHI depends on who records it and how the record is used. For example, a health tracker on a mobile device that records a person’s blood pressure each day may not be PHI because it hasn’t been transferred or maintained by a HIPAA-covered entity. However, if that data is sent to the hospital and becomes part of the nurse’s medical records, it becomes PHI.
The HIPAA Privacy Rule provides federal protections for PHI held by covered entities and gives patients a number of rights with respect to that information. However, the rule is carefully balanced to permit disclosure of PHI when necessary for patient care or in other limited circumstances.
SITES WE SUPPORT
Invoice Postal Mailing – Wix















