PHI stands for Protected Health Information. Which of the following is an example of PHI?

• A. The hospital's annual budget.
• B. A patient’s diagnosis in a medical record.
• C. A de-identified dataset with no patient identifiers.
• D. A list of non-health-related phone numbers.

Answer: (B)

Understanding what counts as Protected Health Information (PHI) under HIPAA helps you spot what must be protected. PHI is any information about a person’s health status, the care they receive, or the payment for that care, if that information can identify the individual. In a medical record, a patient’s diagnosis is health information that is linked to that identifiable person, so it is PHI.

The other options don’t fit PHI as described: a hospital budget is financial information about the organization, not health information tied to an individual; a de-identified dataset has had identifiers removed and therefore cannot identify the person, so it’s not PHI; a list of non-health-related phone numbers contains no health information about an individual.