Q: I work for a pharmaceutical company. I am aware of the more obvious identifiers, but are patient diagnoses or ICD-10 codes (without any other identifiers such as dates of birth or Social Security numbers) considered PHI? I have heard arguments on both sides.
Q: If a patient receives less than 24 hours of observation care, do you still have to provide the patient with the MOON form? We often have surgical outpatients who will need observation for six to 12 hours for pain control, IV antibiotics, or other services. After treatment, we will discharge them home, but we need to put them on our surgical floor to provide this care and consequently have been putting them on observation status.
Q: The recent hurricanes around Florida have reminded us we need to prepare for physical disasters. What are some good ways to secure PHI when we know we've got weather that can potentially physically destroy buildings and potentially do damage to things like servers?
