Disguise of information for case reports: internship apps

[Phipps]

So, I am stuck with preparing a doc of a treatment summary for one of my internship application sites: How do I leave out identifying information? Obviously, I would not mention the name. But how about age, race, locations the patient lives, attends schools, etc.? I could exchange those info with fabricated names of school attended, age, etc. but who would they know that's disguised?? How do others resolve this? Thanks!

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[aly cat]

I've seen some where people use overtly silly things to make it obvious. For example, they change the name to Donald Duck and hometown to Magic Kingdom, etc. I take a less fun approach and replace the item with brackets, e.g., [NAME] is enrolled full-time at [UNIVERSITY] and resides with her parents in [CITY, STATE].

 

[AcronymAllergy]

For name, I want to say I just changed everything to "Patient" or "Client" (e.g., Mr. Patient, the patient, etc.). Age is typically ok unless it's over a certain point (I believe somewhere in the late 80's or 90), as is ethnicity, unless the combination of those two factors could make it reasonably easy to identify the person. For that reason, I think I only included birth year, not month and certainly not day. I believe HIPAA compliance re: location is to leave out anything more specific than zip code, so I want to say I just described the area (e.g., a small city in the midwestern United States). I didn't include any names of schools, companies, etc.

 

[Phipps]

I've seen some where people use overtly silly things to make it obvious. For example, they change the name to Donald Duck and hometown to Magic Kingdom, etc. I take a less fun approach and replace the item with brackets, e.g., [NAME] is enrolled full-time at [UNIVERSITY] and resides with her parents in [CITY, STATE].

For name, I want to say I just changed everything to "Patient" or "Client" (e.g., Mr. Patient, the patient, etc.). Age is typically ok unless it's over a certain point (I believe somewhere in the late 80's or 90), as is ethnicity, unless the combination of those two factors could make it reasonably easy to identify the person. For that reason, I think I only included birth year, not month and certainly not day. I believe HIPAA compliance re: location is to leave out anything more specific than zip code, so I want to say I just described the area (e.g., a small city in the midwestern United States). I didn't include any names of schools, companies, etc.

THANK YOU BOTH!!!

 

[LETSGONYR]

So, I am stuck with preparing a doc of a treatment summary for one of my internship application sites: How do I leave out identifying information? Obviously, I would not mention the name. But how about age, race, locations the patient lives, attends schools, etc.? I could exchange those info with fabricated names of school attended, age, etc. but who would they know that's disguised?? How do others resolve this? Thanks!

I included a note at the top of the report that all identifying information had been changed. And I used fake names of people, places, and schools. But on the other hand, the sites know where you trained, so they'll have a general idea of what clinic or region the case came from.

 

[cara susanna]

I put [REDACTED]

 

[463951]

I blacked any identifying info out, it just seemed so much easier that way. And then converted it to a PDF so it couldn't be tampered with.

 

[smalltownpsych]

I prefer to use pseudonyms myself. Not quite anything as silly as Donald Duck or Magic Kingdom, more like John and Jane Doe from Smalltown, USA went to State University. Ethnicity isn't really identifying info so have always left that alone.

 

[hopeful8]

The HIPAA guidelines are a good reference, and the AAPI instructions state that "All clinical material submitted to internship programs must have identifying information redacted according to HIPAA guidelines"
-- link: http://hipaa.wisc.edu/ResearchGuide/deidentification.html