The federal government has laws and regulations in place that are designed to protect your privacy (you will hear them referred to as the HIPAA laws.) These laws require us to be very careful about the medical information (called Protected Health Information or PHI) we share, and they consider the information about your ambulance trip (including the invoice) to be PHI. The questions we ask and the forms that must be filled out if we are to share your information with anyone besides you are required by law and are designed to protect you and the privacy of your medical records.