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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.
  • Substance Use Disorder Patients: these patients are individuals who have received substance use disorder treatment at a facility or clinic that receives federal funds under the 42 CFR Part 2 law.
  • 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

      Exclusion Authority
  Protected Category OMOP Tables Identified OMOP De-identified OMOP
1 Special status patients (employees, providers, VIPs, etc.) <all tables> Mount Sinai policy Mount Sinai policy
2 Patients treated at a clinic subject to 42 CFR Part 2 <all tables> Federal 42 CFR Part 2 Federal 42 CFR Part 2
3 Epic Community Connect (“VEMR”) patients not shared with Mount Sinai <all tables> Mount Sinai legal agreement Mount Sinai legal agreement
4 Epic Community Connect (“VEMR”) encounters and other records <all tables> Mount Sinai legal agreement Mount Sinai legal agreement
5 PHI data elements (including dates) <all tables> <not excluded> HIPAA 45 CFR 164.514
6 Patient addresses location <not excluded> HIPAA 45 CFR 164.514
7 Clinical notes (including lab, pathology & imaging reports) note <not excluded> HIPAA 45 CFR 164.514 **
8 Clinical notes marked as sensitive in Epic (e.g., some psychiatry notes) note Mount Sinai policy Mount Sinai policy

 

** Unable to de-identify text (i.e., “unstructured” or “free-text”) clinical 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.