What is a deidentified data set?
A deidentified data set is PHI from which the following identifiers of the individual or of relatives, employers, or household members of the individual, have been removed: Names; All geographic subdivisions smaller than a State, including street address, city, county, precinct, zip code, and their equivalent geocodes, except for the initial three digits of a zip code if, according to the current publicly available data from the Bureau of the Census: The geographic unit formed by combining all zip codes with the same three initial digits contains more than 20,000 people; and The initial three digits of a zip code for all such geographic units containing 20,000 or fewer people is changed to 000. All elements of dates (except year) for dates directly related to an individual, including birth date, admission date, discharge date, date of death; and all ages over 89 and all elements of dates (including year) indicative of such age, except that such ages and elements may be aggregated into