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.