Patient Identifying Information

The Health Insurance Portability and Accounting Act (HIPAA) is in place to protect health insurance coverage and sets national standards for health care. One of the areas of health care that HIPAA explicitly lays down standards for is Patient Identifying Information.

Purpose

• The major purpose of Patient Identifying Information is to ensure that the correct person is being issued the proper treatment. All information that is obtained is entered into a database and used to provide the most adequate care. Another major reason for patient identifying information is to ensure that the correct person is billed for the medical care administered.

What is Included

• Under HIPAA a host of things are considered patient identifying information, such as the patient's name, Social Security numbers, home phone numbers, medical record numbers, account numbers and physical addresses.

De-identification

• It is extremely important that the patient identifying information acquired is de-identified, or erased over time. Proper disposal of the patient identifying information is important because failure to do so could lead to fraud. Most hospitals will employ the use of databases such as De-ID or Deidentify to remove the patient identifying information effectively.