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Editorial

The Rationale for Incorporation of HIPAA Compliant Unique Patient, Surgeon, and Hospital Identifier Fields in The STS Database

^a The Congenital Heart Institute of Florida (CHIF), All Children's Hospital and Saint Josephs Children's Hospital of Tampa, University of South Florida College of Medicine, Cardiac Surgical Associates, Saint Petersburg and Tampa, Florida
^b University of Florida, Gainesville and Jacksonville, Florida
^c Virginia Mason Medical Center, Seattle, Washington
^d University of Colorado Denver, School of Medicine, Aurora, Colorado
^e Children's Hospital Boston, Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts
^f Brody School of Medicine, East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina

^_* Address correspondence to Dr Jacobs, The Congenital Heart Institute of Florida (CHIF), Cardiac Surgical Associates (CSA), 625 Sixth Ave S, Suite 475, Saint Petersburg, FL 33701 (Email: jeffjacobs@msn.com).

The first 300 words of the full text of this article appear below.

	Introduction

 
As cardiothoracic surgeons, one of our professional responsibilities is the longitudinal follow-up of patients undergoing cardiothoracic surgery. The Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) database is the largest clinical cardiothoracic surgical database in North America and currently includes 1,051 participating sites with 3,202 participating surgeons (ie, in the adult cardiac surgery database there are 881 participants and 2,682 surgeons; in the general thoracic surgery database there are 98 participants and 345 surgeons; and in the congenital database there are 72 participants and 175 surgeons). Data in The STS database is verified through both an intrinsic data verification process, designed to rectify inconsistencies of data and missing elements of data, as well as an onsite audit program, with verification of the data at the primary source of the data. Presently The STS databases provide only in-hospital and 30-day follow-up of patients. Recognizing the critical importance of long-term follow-up, The STS Workforce on National Databases has initiated a strategy to facilitate longitudinal follow-up of patients in the database. A key element of this strategy entails the use of specific identifiers that will permit long-term tracking of important patient events. Accordingly, on January 1, 2008, The STS database began collecting Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Compliant Unique Patient, Surgeon, and Hospital Identifier Fields. (In this Editorial, we will refer to "HIPAA Compliant Unique Patient, Surgeon, and Hospital Identifier Fields" as "Identifier Fields.") Blast e-mails announcing these plans were sent to The STS database participants on April 24, 2007 and January 17, 2008. The purpose of this editorial is to document the rationale for the incorporation of these new fields of data into The STS database.

The Identifier Fields were added to The STS adult cardiac surgery database beginning January 1, 2008, and similar fields will be added to The STS general thoracic . . . [Full Text of this Article]