Is your organization safeguarding sensitive health information effectively?

Challenges in managing sensitive health information

Consider the complexities of proactive care coordination following a patient’s discharge from a mental health facility. The primary goal is to prevent readmission by providing ongoing treatment through local community care facilities. To achieve this, mental health providers must make referrals to external resources and maintain open communication with the patient’s care team. However, without explicit patient consent to share sensitive information, providers are required to suppress this data in the patient’s record.

Currently, this suppression process often relies on resource-intensive manual interventions each time data is requested. Such manual processes not only strain operational resources but also increase the risk of errors and omissions, which can compromise patient confidentiality and care outcomes.

Healthcare organizations additionally face the challenge of maintaining sensitivity codes across multiple coding systems (such as ICD-10, CPT, etc.) which update multiple times a year. This is a complex and resource-heavy initiative, particularly for organizations with limited clinical informatics capacity. Manual approaches to identifying and managing sensitive codes across all clinical domains can require over 30,000 hours to implement, an estimated cost of $300,000, and more than 400 hours annually to maintain, adding another $40,000 in costs each year.

Improving safeguards of sensitive patient information

The need to protect sensitive health data is growing due to the regulatory actions of various states. Data sharing is becoming more widespread with the increased use of FHIR, and Health data sharing networks are increasing. Now is the time to make sure your organization is identifying sensitive data and treating it carefully.

The ability to automate the masking of sensitive patient data provides payers, providers, and patients with the peace of mind that data is only shared with those it should be. Content that comprehensively addresses sensitive patient data is an important part of any technology infrastructure aimed at efficient and accurate identification and filtering of sensitive information.

Embracing an automated framework can ensure:

• Compliance with legal, regulatory, and licensing requirements
• Compliance with 42 CFR Part 2, HIPAA, and varying state laws, including concealment of information of minors under 18 years of age
• Sensitive code identification is always up to date

Health Language offers expert built sensitivity content that helps healthcare organizations ensure sensitive information is protected. Representing categories such as Mental and Behavioral Health, Alcohol & Substance use disorders, HIV, Reproductive Health, Gender Affirming Care, Abuse, Neglect, and Violence, and Genetic Information, the Health Language sensitive codes content set includes over 100,000 codes in 22 granular categories from 10 distinct code sets. Other publicly available standard sets only contain around 10,000 codes in less than 20 categories from 6 terminologies.

Notably, an internal analysis found that Health Language sensitivity content was more comprehensive (adding more than 90,000 codes) and up-to-date (Health Language Sensitivity Codes are updated monthly) than value sets offered through the Substance Abuse and Mental Services Administration.

The Health Language Data Quality Workbench helps healthcare organizations improve data operations with efficiency, accuracy, and confidence. It streamlines compliance by supporting accurate and efficient identification of sensitive patient information. With easy to use and clinically complete definitions for sensitive patient conditions our workbench enriches your data to protect all relevant diagnosis and treatment information in compliance with privacy laws. Speak to an expert to learn more about the Health Language Sensitivity Codes.