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

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Legal Issues

The STS databases are compliant with the HIPAA of 1996 [1, 2]. The Participation Agreement with The STS, and the Appendix I of the Business Associate Contract & Data Use Agreement, acknowledge that Participants in the database, The STS, and Duke Clinical Research Institute, agree to comply with all statutes and regulations under federal and state laws concerning patient privacy and data security, including but not limited to the privacy regulations promulgated under HIPAA [1]. The “Privacy

Database Links and Longitudinal Follow-Up

Several initiatives are underway to enhance the abilities of The STS Database to function as a tool for longitudinal follow-up. These initiatives involve both obtaining follow-up data from other databases and linking The STS databases to other databases. All data linking agreements will be strictly adherent to HIPAA privacy regulations. We firmly believe that this new capacity for long-term follow-up will be an invaluable resource for our profession.

The Future

The rationale for the incorporation of HIPAA Compliant Unique Patient, Surgeon, and Hospital Identifier Fields into the STS Database is to enhance the ability of the STS Database to function as a tool for longitudinal follow-up. The ability to obtain data from national death registries, administrative claims databases, and other clinical databases, is vital to this objective. Each of these data sources will provide different and complementary data as exemplified by the database links briefly

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