Scientific Computing and Data / Mount Sinai Data Warehouse / About MSDW / Protected Patient Categories
Protected Patient Information
In compliance with HIPAA privacy and security, all data queries exclude the following protected patient categories:
- Special Status Patients: these patients include celebrities and public figures, Mount Sinai employees, providers, board members, donors, VIPs, and the family members of these patients.
- HIV-Related Patients: these patients include individuals who have HIV and/or AIDS; records include all lab tests for HIV irrespective of their outcome (positive or negative), and any records that are HIV-related, such as HIV screening, counseling, risk assessments, reasons for visits, past medical history, etc.
- Substance Abuse Patients: these patients include individuals who have received substance abuse disorder treatment at a federally funded facility (42 CFR Part 2) and individuals who have any data matching the substance use value sets as published by ResDAC.
- Community Connect Patients: these patients have seen Mount Sinai providers and also seen independent practices participating in the Mount Sinai Health Partners (MSHP) Clinically Integrated Network, but data from independent practices are excluded.
These records are excluded from de-identified OMOP data sets and from PHI data sets unless explicitly approved by the investigator’s IRB (42 CFR Part 46).
Data Exclusions
| Protected Category | OMOP Tables | Exclusion Authority | |
| Identified OMOP | De-identified OMOP | ||
| Special status patients (employees, providers, VIPs, etc.) | <all> | Mount Sinai policy | Mount Sinai policy |
| Patients with HIV/AIDS | <all> | NYS Article 27-F | Mount Sinai policy |
| HIV laboratory tests (irrespective of result) | measurement | NYS Article 27-F | Mount Sinai policy |
| Records related to HIV/AIDS screening | condition_occurrence, observation | NYS Article 27-F | Mount Sinai policy |
| Patients treated at a clinic subject to 42 CFR Part 2 | <all> | Federal 42 CFR Part 2 | Federal 42 CFR Part 2 |
| Patients with substance use diagnoses or procedures* | <all> | Scientific Computing policy | Scientific Computing policy |
| Epic Community Connect (“VEMR”) patients not shared with Mount Sinai | <all> | Mount Sinai legal agreement | Mount Sinai legal agreement |
| Epic Community Connect (“VEMR”) encounters and other records | <all> | Mount Sinai legal agreement | Mount Sinai legal agreement |
| PHI data elements (including dates) | <all> | <not excluded> | HIPAA 45 CFR 164.514 |
| Patient addresses | location | <not excluded> | HIPAA 45 CFR 164.514 |
| Clinical notes (including lab & imaging reports) | note | <not excluded> | HIPAA 45 CFR 164.514*** |
| Psychiatry notes** | note | HIPAA 45 CFR 164.508(a)(2) | HIPAA 45 CFR 164.508(a)(2) |
* To guard against mis-classified 42 CFR Part 2 patients
** Unable to reliably exclude only psychotherapy notes
*** Unable to de-identify unstructured notes
De-Identified OMOP Data
Our OMOP data has been de-identified using Hripcsak’s Shift-and-Truncate (SANT) method, which obscures date information by shifting and truncating all dates within a patient record. Read more: Hripcsak et al. “Preserving temporal relations in clinical data while maintaining privacy,” doi:10.193/jamia/ocw001.