Secure PHI: Why Healthcare Needs Redaction Software

As healthcare providers increasingly rely on digital technologies, protecting patient privacy is more crucial than ever. With the rise of electronic medical records and reporting, concerns about safeguarding sensitive health information have reached unprecedented levels.

People are understandably reluctant to share their personal data, as an American Medical Association Survey found that nearly 75% are worried about the privacy of their health records.

This growing concern highlights the need for robust redaction software

to anonymize sensitive information (Protected Health Information or PHI) within medical documents in healthcare.

By effectively redacting PHI, healthcare providers can ensure patient confidentiality, maintain trust, and comply with HIPAA regulations.

In this blog, you will discover the various types of medical records that may require PHI or PII redaction, understand the reasons why document redaction is necessary, and the essential information that needs to be redacted from medical documents.

Types of Medical Documents that may Require Redaction

Before diving deeper into the importance of document, audio, or video redaction software for redacting PII and PHI from medical records, it is crucial to have a clear understanding of the different types of medical documents that may contain sensitive information.

Some common examples of medical documents are as follows:

Medical Records: These are comprehensive files containing patient information, including medical history, diagnoses, treatments, medications, and lab results. They serve as a primary source of patient information for healthcare providers.

Clinical Notes: These include progress notes, physician or nurse documentation, and other healthcare professionals' observations during patient visits. Clinical notes capture important details about the patient's condition, symptoms, assessments, and treatments provided.

Diagnostic Reports: These reports include radiology (X-rays, MRI scans, CT scans), pathology (biopsy results, tissue analysis), and laboratory test reports. They provide information about medical imaging interpretations, disease diagnoses, and test results.

Prescription and Medication Records: These documents contain information about prescribed medications, dosages, administration instructions, and any changes made to the medication regimen. They help track a patient's medication history and ensure proper management of medications.

Consent Forms: Consent forms are legal documents that outline a patient's agreement to specific medical procedures, treatments, or participation in research studies. They detail the risks, benefits, and alternatives involved, ensuring patient understanding and informed decision-making.

Health Insurance and Billing Documents: These documents include insurance claims, Explanation of Benefits (EOB), and invoices for healthcare services rendered. They contain information about insurance coverage, payment details, and patient financial responsibility.

Research and Academic Papers: These documents present the findings of medical research studies, clinical trials, or academic work. They contribute to the advancement of medical knowledge and provide evidence-based information for healthcare professionals.

Quality Assurance and Compliance Documents: These documents include policies, procedures, and guidelines related to quality assurance, regulatory compliance, and accreditation standards. They ensure adherence to best practices and legal requirements within healthcare organizations.

Discharge Summaries: These summaries are created when a patient is discharged from a hospital or healthcare facility. They provide a comprehensive overview of the patient's stay, including diagnoses, treatments, medications, follow-up instructions, and recommended care.

Administrative and Operational Documents: These include administrative forms, schedules, staff rosters, facility maintenance records, and other documents related to the day-to-day operations of healthcare organizations.

Now let's discover what information you might have to redact from these documents.

What to Redact from Medical Records and How Can a Redaction Software Help?

Medical records often contain sensitive information that can be used to identify an individual. This sensitive information is commonly referred to as protected health information (PHI).

To protect PHI and ensure patient privacy, healthcare organizations are required to adhere to strict regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act HIPAA Privacy Rule (a set of regulations that establishes specific measures to protect the privacy of PHI) and EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Redaction, a process that removes or obscures sensitive details, is a crucial practice for deidentifying sensitive information and compliance with both HIPAA and GDPR.

PHI and PII redaction ensures that only authorized individuals have access to relevant, non-sensitive information, minimizing the risk of privacy breaches and protecting patient confidentiality in compliance with HIPAA regulations.

While medical documents contain various types of information, not all of it is considered protected health information (PHI). For example, quasi-details like age or gender on their own are not considered PHI unless they are associated with a patient's name or other specific identifiers.

However, there are 18 identifiers that are considered PHI and must be kept confidential. These identifiers include names, addresses, social security numbers, medical record numbers, and other specific details that can be used to identify an individual.

Infographic showing PHI types in medical records.

If personal identifiers are accessed by malicious individuals, they can cause potential harm to an individual physically, mentally, or even financially.

In January 2024 alone, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) received reports of 61 incidents involving the unauthorized access of healthcare data, impacting over 500 medical records.

By implementing effective redaction techniques, healthcare providers and organizations can mitigate the risk of such harm and protect the privacy of patients and their families.

But, can any ordinary redaction software effectively anonymize sensitive medical information?

Given the unprecedented surge in number of data security incidents across the US, HHS has outlined Cybersecurity Performance Goals (CPGs) to help healthcare organizations implement high-impact measures to secure medical data.

Notable CPGs include multifactor authentication, strong encryption for sensitive data in transit, distinct user accounts, email security, centralized data collection, third party vulnerability disclosure, and more.

While these measures are inevitable, OCR (Office for Civil Rights) has made it clear that these goals reflect only the baseline security practices.

Hence, it's clear that to ensure data security and limit access to authorized personnel only, a high-quality redaction software equipped with all the aforementioned features is imperative.

VIDIZMO Redactor: Ultimate Solution for Redaction in Medical Records

VIDIZMO Redactor is recognized as a leading AI redaction software that caters to diverse redaction needs. It offers robust features and functionalities, allowing organizations to effectively redact sensitive information from documents, ensuring privacy protection and regulatory compliance.

With VIDIZMO Redactor, medical professionals can confidently disclose research documents while safeguarding the privacy of individuals and meeting the demands of privacy regulations.

Screenshot of VIDIZMO Redactor showing PII redaction from medical documents

Robust Security

Key VIDIZMO redactor’s data features that make it an ideal choice for healthcare providers include;

Industry-standard encryption to guarantee data confidentiality in transit and at rest.
Configurable retention to empower healthcare providers to define custom data retention policies in line with compliance requirements (HIPAA or GDPR) or internal security protocols.
Location and domain restrictions, role-based access controls, and multi-factor authentication to provide granular control and secure access to PHI.
Detailed chain of custody reports and real-time activity alerts ensure complete audit trials and swift response to potential HIPAA violations.

AI-Enhanced Search

In addition to providing comprehensive security features to safeguard your sensitive documents, the redaction software also offer AI-enhanced search to allow users swiftly search medical documents with relevant tags, keywords, spoken data, meta data and more.

With this feature, authorized users can easily search for specific words or phrases containing personal or confidential information within documents, saving time and effort.

Automatic Keyword Detection and Redaction

The redaction software allows for the identification and redaction of keywords, including the use of regular expression patterns to find and conceal various types of sensitive data like phone numbers, social security numbers, and credit card numbers.

Flexibility

The flexibility of the VIDIZMO Redactor extends to manual text selection and OCR (Optical Character recognition) capabilities.

Users have the freedom to manually select text areas within documents and draw precise bounding boxes for redaction, ensuring that only necessary information is concealed while maintaining the integrity of the document.

Whereas they can also leverage the OCR functionality for efficient redaction of custom patterns or specific keywords from scanned documents.

Bulk Document Redaction

For organizations dealing with a large volume of documents, VIDIZMO Redactor offers bulk document redaction functionality.

This feature allows users to select multiple documents and perform redactions simultaneously, enhancing efficiency and streamlining the redaction process.

Bulk redaction is a convenient and time-saving solution for organizations that regularly handle numerous files.

Summing Up

The sensitive nature of health data necessitates the utmost protection and privacy in various types of medical documentation. Premium quality redaction software plays a critical role in safeguarding patient information and complying with legal regulations.

VIDIZMO Redactor transcends basic redaction software, offering a robust security suite specifically tailored for healthcare data protection.

The redaction software leverages AI technology to ensure accurate and efficient redaction of sensitive healthcare data.

By adopting tools like VIDIZMO Redactor, healthcare organizations can enhance patient privacy, mitigate the risk of privacy breaches, and maintain compliance with legal regulations.

Learn more about VIDIZMO Redactor or contact us today to discuss your needs and explore how we can help.

or you can avail free trial!