Section He-C 1502.01 - Definitions(a) "Acute care hospital" means a health care facility that is licensed by the state of New Hampshire under RSA 151:2 as a general hospital.(b) "Agent" means a person engaged under contractual agreement with the department for the performance of services pursuant to RSA 126:25.(c) "Cell size" means the count of patients that share a set of characteristics in a statistical table.(d) "Clinical data" means the health care, hospital and non-hospital health care facility data, and all other data collected in accordance with the rules adopted pursuant to RSA 126:27.(e) "Commissioner" means the commissioner of the New Hampshire department of health and human services or his or her designee.(f) "Confidential data" means individual or collective data elements contained in the data set that: (1) Have not been revealed previously to the general public; and(2) Directly identify a patient.(g) "Confidential research data set" means a data set available for research, subject to the provisions in He-C 1504.05 below, which contains confidential data and does not contain information that can be used to directly identify individual health care practitioners.(h) "Data" mean factual information used as a basis for calculating or measuring.(i) "Data set" means a collection of individual data records.(j) "Database" means a collection of data organized especially for search and retrieval.(k) "Department" means the New Hampshire department of health and human services.(l) "Direct patient identifiers" means any information, other than information used to create anonymous or encrypted data, that plainly discloses the identity of an individual, including, but not limited to, those data elements specified in RSA 91-A:10, I(e) .(m) "Disclosure" means the communication of clinical data to a person not already in possession of that information.(n) "Element" means a constituent part of a database to which values can be assigned.(o) "Freestanding hospital emergency facility" means a health care facility that is licensed by the state of New Hampshire under RSA 151:2 as a freestanding hospital emergency facility.(p) "Health care data" means information consisting of, or derived directly from patient discharge data. "Health care data" does not include analysis, reports, or studies containing information from health care data sets, if those analyses, reports, or studies have already been released in response to another request for information or as part of a general distribution of public information by the department.(q) "Health care facility" means, in this chapter, a public or private, proprietary or not-for-profit entity or institution providing health services licensed under RSA 151:2 that is an: (3) Freestanding hospital emergency facility; or(4) Walk-in urgent care center.(r) "Health care practitioner" means physicians and all persons licensed or registered as a health care provider in the state of New Hampshire including, but not limited to: (9) Licensed clinical social workers;(10) Marriage and family therapists;(11) Professional counselors; and(12) Physicians' assistants.(s) "Indirect patient identifier" means information that used in conjunction with another data set that contains direct patient identifiers which could identify patients, but used alone do not identify patients, including: (1) All geographic subdivisions of New Hampshire or any state or province, including census tracts, blocks, and block groups, cities, towns, and zip codes, except county or areas made up of 10 or more municipalities; and(2) All elements of dates, except year, for dates related to a patient, 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 elements may be aggregated into a single category of age 90 and older.(t) "Inpatient acute care discharges" means records or data from discharges of patients who are admitted to a health care facility and are coded as "Inpatient" as described in He-C 1503.04(a) (5) , "type of bill".(u) "Limited use research data set" means a data set available for research, subject to provisions in He-C 1504.04 below, from which all direct patient identifiers have been encrypted in such a way as to not allow direct identification and that does not contain information that can be used to directly identify individual health care practitioners.(v) "Patient" means any person in a data set that is the subject of the activities of the claim performed by the health care provider.(w) "Principal investigator" means the person in charge of a project that makes use of limited use research or research health care claims data sets. The principal investigator is the custodian of the data and is responsible for the observance of all conditions of use and for establishment and maintenance of security arrangements to prevent unauthorized use.(x) "Provided by law" means use and disclosure as permitted or required by New Hampshire state law governing programs or activities undertaken by the state or its agencies, or required by federal law.(y) "Public use data set" means a data set which contains no confidential data, and from which all known direct or indirect identifiers about individual patients, health care practitioners and employers or purchaser groups have been removed, and that contains the data elements specified in He-C 1504.02 below.(z) "Release" means to make all or part of the claims data set available for inspection and analysis to persons other than the department.(aa) "Specialty hospital" means a health care facility licensed by the state of New Hampshire under RSA 151:2 as a specialty hospital that is engaged in providing psychiatric, substance abuse, physical rehabilitation, long term acute care, or other services to patients under the supervision of a physician.(ab) "Statistical table" means single or multivariate counts based on the information contained in a data set and which does not include any direct identifiers.(ac) "Walk-in urgent care center" means a health care facility licensed under RSA 151:2 by the state of New Hampshire as part of a larger general hospital, freestanding hospital emergency facility, or outpatient clinic that provides patients access to prompt medical care for minor illnesses or injury without an appointment. clinic that provides patients access to prompt medical care for minor illnesses or injury without an appointment.
N.H. Admin. Code § He-C 1502.01
#4069, eff 6-6-86; EXPIRED 6-6-92
New. #5844, eff 7-1-94, EXPIRED: 7-1-00
New. # 9436, eff 3-21-09
Amended by Volume XXXVII Number 15, Filed April 13, 2017, Proposed by #12139, Effective 3/22/2017, Expires 9/18/2017.