THIS NOTICE DESCRIBES HOW MEDICAL INFORMATION ABOUT YOU MAY BE USED AND DISCLOSED AND HOW YOU GET ACCESS TO THIS INFORMATION. PLEASE REVIEW IT CAREFULLY.
THIS NOTICE APPLIES TO ALL OF THE RECORDS OF YOUR CARE GENERATED BY OUR FACILITY, WHETHER MADE BY THE CENTER OR AN ASSOCIATED ENTITY.
Our staff understands that medical information about you and your health is personal. We are committed to protecting medical information about you. We create a medical record that details the care and services you receive. We refer to this as protected health information (PHI). We need that record in order to provide you with quality care and to comply with certain legal requirements. This notice applies to any medical records generated by our office. While we may sometimes care for you during a hospital stay the hospital may have different policies and/or procedures and a separate notice about your medical information.
TREATMENT, PAYMENT AND HEALTH CARE OPERATIONS
The most common reason why we use or disclose your health information is for treatment, payment or health care operations. Examples of how we use or disclose information for treatment purposes are: setting up appointment for you; performing a physical examination; performing therapeutic or diagnostic tests; referring you to another doctor or clinic for additional or specialist services; or getting copies of your health information from another professional that you may have seen before us. Examples of how we use or disclose your health information for payment purposes are; asking you about your health insurance coverage or other sources of payment; preparing and sending bills or claims; and collecting unpaid amoutns (either ourselves or through a collection agency or attorney). "Health care operations" mean those administrative and managerial functions that we have to do in order to run the Practice more efficiently and make sure that all of our patients receive quality care. Examples of how we use or disclose your health information for health care operations are: financial or billing audits; internal quality assurance; reviewing our treatment and services to evaluate the performance of our staff; participation in ma aged care plans; defense of legal matters; business planning; and outside storage of our records.
In order to maintain the communications that allow for quick, effective, and high quality health care, we may release medical information about you to a family member or friend who accompanies you to your appointment, with your consent.
Under most circumstances, we are not required to obtain a signed consent for Treatment, Payment, or Operations. However, we will ask you to sign an authorizaqtion for certain purposes such as release of PHI to a referring provider or for claims payment in order to comply with state regulations.
We routinely use your health information inside the Practice for these purposes without any special permission. We will ask for special written permission in the following situations: research, legal requests, and marketing. We will also ask for your written authorization before we disclose PHI that pertains to HIV, AIDS, mental health treatment of substance abuse.
USES AND DISCLOSURES FOR OTHER REASONS WITHOUT PERMISSION
In some limited situations, the law allows or requires us to use or disclose your health information without your permission. Not all of these situations will apply to us; some may never come up at our office at all. Such uses or disclosures are: