Privacy and Security within Data and Health Care Records IT Essay (Essay Sample)

Privacy and Security within Data and Health Care Records
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The Data Elements of the Patient Record that are regarded as Protected Health Information (PHI)
Protected health information (PHI) is considered to be personally identifiable data that associates with a person’s health condition or the healthcare's provision (HIPAA Journal, 2008). The PHI, thus, relates to personally identifiable data that is generated, transmitted, or collected by a covered entity of HIPAA in association with the healthcare service’s payment. Such data must contain elements of a patient record that are regarded as PHI. This section of the paper is, hence, purposed to highlight such data elements.
The health information like prescription data, results of medical tests, and treatment records are regarded as PHI under the Security Rules of HIPAA just like the demographic data and national identification figures such as ethnicity, gender, and dates of birth (Rodriguez, 2011). Notably, PHI associates mostly with physical records that are concerned with the patients’ information or members of healthcare providers in charge of health arrangement (McGuire, 2008). As such, PHI will only be regarded as PHI when the identification of a person can happen by use of the available information. It is, thus, worth noting that if the identifiers are removed from the health data, then it ceases being a PHI and the restrictions on disclosures and uses of HIPAA Privacy Rule apply no more.