Notice Of Privacy Practices

This Notice of Privacy Practices describes how we may use and disclose your protected health information to carry out treatment, payment or health care operations and for other purposes that are permitted or required by law. It also describes your rights to access and control certain confidential health care information about you, known as Protected Health Information or PHI. Examples of PHI include demographic information, physical or mental health or condition, and related health care services.

We may change the terms of our notice, at any time. The new notice will be effective for all PHI that we maintain at the time. Upon your request, we will provide you with any revised Notice of Privacy Practices by calling the office and requesting that a revised copy be sent to you in the mail.

Uses and Disclosure of PHI

We may use PHI for the purposes of treatment, payment, and health care operations, in most cases without your written permission. Examples for our uses of your PHI include:

For treatment: We will use and disclose your PHI to provide, coordinate, or manage your health care and any related services. This includes such things as verbal and written information that we obtain about you and use pertaining to your medical condition and treatment provided to you by us and other medical personnel. It also includes information we give to other health care personnel to whom we transfer your care and treatment, and includes transfer of PHI via radio or telephone to the hospital or dispatch center as well as providing the hospital with a copy of the written record we create in the course of providing you with treatment and transport.

Payment: Your PHI will be used, as needed, to obtain payment for the services we have provided to you. Activities may include determining your eligibility or coverage for insurance benefits, reviewing services provided to you for medical necessity, organizing your PHI and submitting bills to insurance companies, and collection of outstanding accounts.

Health care operations: This includes quality assurance activities, employee review activities, training, and creating and conducting business reviews. We may share your PHI with third party “business associates” that perform various activities for us. Whenever an arrangement between our office and a business associate involves the use or disclosure of you PHI, we will have a written contract that contains terms that will protect your privacy.

Fundraising: We may contact you when we are in the process of raising funds for our company.

We are permitted to use PHI without your written authorization, or opportunity to object in certain situations, including:

Required By Law: We may use or disclose your protected health information to the extent that the law requires the use or disclosure. The use or disclosure will be made in compliance with the law and will be limited to the relevant requirements of the law. You will be notified, as required by law, of any uses or disclosures.

Public Health: We may disclose your protected health information for public health activities and purposes to a public health authority that is permitted by law to collect or receive the information. The disclosure will be made for the purpose of controlling disease, injury or disability. We may also disclose your protected health information, if directed by the public health authority, to a foreign government agency that is collaborating with the public health authority.

Communicable Diseases: We may disclose your protected health information, if authorized by law, to a person who may have been exposed to a communicable disease or may otherwise be at risk of contracting or spreading the disease or condition.

Health Oversight: We may disclose your protected health information to a health oversight agency for activities authorized by law, such as audits, investigations and inspections. Oversight agencies seeking this information include government agencies that oversee the health care system, government benefit programs, other government regulatory programs, and civil rights laws.

Abuse or Neglect: We may disclose your protected health information to a public health authority that is authorized by law to receive reports of child abuse or neglect. In addition, we may disclose your protected health information if we believe that you have been a victim of abuse, neglect or domestic violence to the governmental entity or agency authorized to receive such information. In this case, the disclosure will be made consistent with the requirements of applicable federal and state laws.

Food and Drug Administration: We may disclose your protected health information to a person or company required by the Food and Drug Administration to report adverse events, product defects or problems, biological product deviations, track products; to enable product recalls; to make repairs or replacements or to conduct post marketing surveillance, as required.

Legal Proceedings: We may disclose protected health information in the course of any judicial or administrative proceeding, in response to an order of a court or administrative tribunal (to the extent such disclosure is expressly authorized), in certain conditions in response to a subpoena, discovery request or other lawful process.

Law Enforcement: We may also disclose protected health information, so long as applicable legal requirements are met, for law enforcement purposes. These law enforcement purposes include (1) legal processes and otherwise required by law, (2) limited information requests for identification and location purposes, (3) pertaining to victims of crime, (4) suspicion that death has occurred as a result of criminal conduct, (5) in the event that a crime occurs on the premises of the practice, and (6) medical emergency (not on the Practice’s premises) and it is likely that a crime has occurred.

Coroners, Funeral Directors and Organ Donation: We may disclose protected health information to a coroner or medical examiner for identification purposes, determining cause of death or for the coroner or medical examiner to perform other duties authorized by law. We may also disclose protected health information to a funeral director, as authorized by law, in order to permit the funeral director to carry out their duties. We may disclose information in reasonable anticipation of death. Protected health information may be used and disclosed for cadaveric organ, eye or tissue donation purposes.

Research: We may disclose your protected health information to researchers when their research has been approved by an institutional review board, which reviewed the research proposal and established protocols to ensure the privacy of your protected health information.