Wednesday, November 28, 2012

HHS Publishes Guidance on How to De-Identify Protected Health Information



From the article: "On November 26, 2012, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights (“OCR”) published guidance on the two methods for de-identifying protected health information (“PHI”) in accordance with the HIPAA Privacy Rule. The guidance, which was required by the Health Information Technology for Clinical and Economic Health (“HITECH”) Act, has been developed over several years by OCR in collaboration with healthcare entities and other industry experts and builds upon the discussions from a workshop on de-identification that took place in March 2010.

The guidance covers three main topics: (1) key terms in the HIPAA Privacy Rule, (2) the statistical expert method for de-identifying PHI, and (3) the safe harbor method for de-identifying PHI." Read more

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