Protected
Health Information (PHI) is basically the personally identifiable
health information that is protected and regulated by the Health
Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, better known as HIPAA.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was
filed or rather written 20 years ago when smartphones were a distant
reality.
Therefore,
everything related to this act was penned down for mostly an analog
world of physical X-rays and even paper files. And in today’s era
of wearables, genetic sequencing, health apps, and much more, getting
a proper and precise definition of PHI can be quite difficult to
understand, especially for the developers who are trying to parse or
figure out whether they need to be HIPAA compliant or not.
Through
this post, we hope to provide a clearer picture of what exactly is
PHI or Protected Health Information and what is not considered PHI.
And hopefully, you as a healthcare
software developer will
be able to use the below-mentioned information as a reference while
you are determining if all the information that you are collecting
for your digital health solution fall under PHI or not.
Covered Entities and Business Associates
Before
we proceed further to talk about the definition of PHI, what
information constitutes PHI and what doesn’t, let’s first
understand two major definitions under HIPAA and those are –
Business Associates and Covered Entities.
Covered
Entities
A
covered entity is basically a person who provides treatment, payment,
as well as the operations in the healthcare sector. According to the
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS),
healthcare providers, health plans, and healthcare clearinghouses
fall under the covered entities. The healthcare providers usually
include doctors, clinics, dentists, psychologists, nursing homes,
pharmacies, chiropractors, and last but not the least, the hospitals.
Health
plans include the health insurance companies, company health plans,
HMOs, Medicare & Medicaid. In fact, schools and employers that
handle the PHI in order to enroll their employees and students in any
sort of health plan also fall under the definition of a Health Plan.
Read
more on Protected
Health Information (PHI)
