What You Need To Know About The Expert Determination Method

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The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is an important one that all medical professionals are aware of and required to follow. A big part of HIPAA is about maintaining the privacy of all individuals who receive healthcare from professionals. The HIPAA privacy rule, as you are probably well aware, requires that professionals "de-identify" health care related information, which simply means to remove identifying information from it and make it so that it is no longer consider protected health information under HIPAA regulations. One of the methods for de-identifying information is known as the expert determination method. If you are unfamiliar with this method and would like to learn more about it and how it works, then continue reading!

Understanding the Expert Determination Method

So, you may now be wondering what, exactly, the expert determination method is. The basic definition is that, under this method, the health care professional must obtain a confirmation from a statistician that there is no risk of identification of the person to whom the information is referring or that the risk of identification is deemed very small.

In other words, a statistician reviews the information, mathematically determines the odds of anyone being able to identify the person in question from the information, and then makes a judgment call related to those odds. As long as that "judgment call" is that it is very unlikely that the person in question could be identified, de-identification of the information has been successfully completed under HIPAA standards.

Different Statisticians Have Different Methods

One of the first things that you should understand about the expert determination method is that different statisticians will have different methods and approaches to determining whether or not it is unlikely for a person to be accurately identified based on given information.

All methods used by statisticians are acceptable as long as the statistician is fully qualified to perform this task. Methods may vary based on the statistician's personal preference, the given data set, and other factors. As such, you are free to choose a statistician whose methods you understand and prefer.

Again, as long as the person is a professional with the necessary credentials in quantitative analysis, you can successfully have expert determination performed in accordance with HIPAA standards.

As you can see, expert determination and getting it done correctly isn't as tricky as you might have thought. With the right help and a full understanding of how this de-identification method works, it is actually quite easy and convenient to use. For more information, contact a business such as Info Incognito.

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12 January 2017

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