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Notice of Privacy Practices
Effective Date: July 1, 2008
THIS NOTICE DESCRIBES HOW
HEALTH INFORMATION ABOUT YOU MAY BE USED AND DISCLOSED AND HOW
YOU CAN GET ACCESS TO THIS INFORMATION. PLEASE REVIEW IT
CAREFULLY.
If you have any questions
about this notice, please contact the Facility Privacy Official
by dialing the main office number.
Each time you visit a
hospital, physician, or other healthcare provider, a record of
your visit is made. Typically, this record contains your
symptoms, examination and test results, diagnoses, treatment, a
plan for future care or treatment and billing-related
information. This notice applies to all of the records of your
care generated by the medical office, whether made by medical
office personnel, agents of the medical office, or your
provider.
Your health insurance,
hospitals, and other treatment providers may have different
policies or notices regarding the use and disclosure of your
health information.
Our Responsibilities:
We are required by law to
maintain the privacy of your health information and provide you
a description of our privacy practices. We will abide by the
terms of this notice.
Uses and Disclosures:
How we may use and disclose Health Information
about you.
The following categories
describe examples of the way we use and disclose health
information:
For Treatment:
We may use health information about you to provide you treatment
or services. We may disclose health information about you to
doctors, nurses, technicians, health students, or other medical
office personnel who are involved in taking care of you at the
medical office. For example: a doctor treating you for a broken
leg may need to know if you have diabetes because diabetes may
slow the healing process. Different departments of the medical
office also may share health information about you in order to
coordinate the different things you may need, such as
prescriptions, lab work, meals, and x-rays.
For Payment:
We may use and disclose health information about your treatment
and services to bill and collect payment from you, your
insurance company or a third party payer. For example, we may
need to give your insurance company information about your
surgery so they will pay us or reimburse you for the treatment.
We may also tell your health plan about treatment you are going
to receive to determine whether your plan will cover it.
For Health Care
Operations: Members of the
medical staff and/or quality improvement team may use
information in your health record to assess the care and
outcomes in your case and others like it. The results will then
be used to continually improve the quality of care for all
patients we serve. For example, we may also combine health
information about many patients to evaluate the need for new
services or treatment. We may disclose information to doctors,
nurses, and students for educational purposes. And we may
combine health information we have with that of other medical
offices to see where we can make improvements. We may remove
information that identifies you from this set of health
information to protect your privacy.
We may also use and disclose health information:
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To business associates we have contracted with to perform
the agreed upon healthcare service and billing for it;
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To remind you that you have an appointment for medical care;
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To assess your satisfaction with our services;
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To tell you about possible treatment alternatives;
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To tell you about health-related benefits or services;
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To contact you as part of payment collection efforts;
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To inform Funeral Directors consistent with applicable law;
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For conducting internal training programs or reviewing
competence of our health care professionals; and
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When disclosing information, primary appointment reminders,
and billing/collections efforts we may leave messages on
your answering machine or voice mail.
Business
Associates: There are some
services provided in our organization through contracts with
business associates. Examples include billing services,
transcriptionists, and technicians assisting with your care.
When these services are contracted, we may disclose your health
information to our business associate so that they can perform
the job we've asked them to do and bill you or your third-party
payer for services rendered. To protect your health information,
however, we require the business associate to appropriately
safeguard your information.
Individuals
Involved in Your Care or Payment for Your Care:
We may release health information about you to a
friend, family member, or organization who is involved in your
medical care or payment of your medical care. In addition, we
may disclose health information about you to an entity assisting
in a disaster relief effort so that your family can be notified
about your condition, status, and location.
Future
Communications: We may
communicate to you via newsletters, mail outs, telephone, or
other means regarding treatment options, health related
information, disease-management programs, wellness programs, or
other community based initiatives or activities in which our
facility is participating.
As required by law,
we may also use and disclose health information for the
following types of entities, including but not limited to:
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Food and Drug Administration
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Public Health or Legal Authorities charged with preventing
or controlling disease, injury or disability
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Correctional Institutions
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Workers Compensation Agents
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Organ and Tissue Donation Organizations
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Military Command Authorities
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Health Oversight Agencies
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Funeral Directors, Coroners and Medical Directors
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National Security and Intelligence Agencies
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Protective Services for the President and Others
Law
Enforcement/Legal Proceedings:
We may disclose health information for law enforcement purposes
as required by law or in response to a valid subpoena.
State Specific
Requirements: Many states have
requirements for reporting including population-based activities
relating to improving health or reducing healthcare costs. Some
states have separate privacy laws that may apply additional
legal requirements. If the state privacy laws are more stringent
than federal privacy laws, the state law preempts the federal
law.
Your Health Information Rights
Although your health
record is the physical property of the healthcare practitioner
or facility that compiled it, you have the
Right to:
Inspect and Copy:
You have the right to inspect
and obtain a copy of the health information that may be used to
make decisions about your care. Usually, this includes medical
and billing records, but does not include psychotherapy notes.
We may deny your request to inspect and copy in certain very
limited circumstances. If you are denied access to health
information, you may request that the denial be reviewed.
Another licensed healthcare professional chosen by the medical
office will review your request and the denial. The person
conducting the review will not be the person who denied your
request. We will comply with the outcome of the review.
Amend:
If you feel that health information we have about you is
incorrect or incomplete, you may ask us to amend the
information. You have the right to request an amendment for as
long as the information is kept by or for the medical office. We
may deny your request for an amendment and if this occurs, you
will be notified of the reason for the denial.
An Accounting of
Disclosures: You have the right
to request an accounting of disclosures. This is a list of
certain disclosures we make of your health information for
purposes other than treatment, payment or healthcare operations
where an authorization was not required.
Request
Restrictions: You have the right
to request a restriction or limitation on the health information
we use or disclose about you for treatment, payment, or health
care operations. You also have the right to request a limit on
the health information we disclose about you to someone who is
involved in your care or the payment for your care, like a
family member or friend. For example, you could ask that we not
use or disclose information about a surgery you had.
We are not required
to agree to your request. If we do
agree, we will comply with your request unless the information
is needed to provide you emergency treatment.
Request
Confidential Communications: You
have the right to request that we communicate with you about
medical matters in a certain way or at a certain location. For
example, you can ask that we contact you at work instead of your
home. The facility will grant requests for confidential
communications at alternative locations and/or via alternative
means only if the request is submitted in writing and the
written request includes a mailing address where the individual
will receive bills for services rendered by the facility and
related correspondence regarding payment for services.
Please realize, we reserve
the right to contact you by other means and at other locations
if you fail to respond to any communication from us that
requires a response. We will notify you in accordance with your
original request prior to attempting to contact you by other
means or at another location.
A Paper Copy of
This Notice: You have the right
to a paper copy of this notice. You may ask us to give you a
copy of this notice at any time. Even if you have agreed to
receive this notice electronically, you are still entitled to a
paper copy of this notice.
If the facility has a
website you may print or view a copy of the notice by clicking
on the Notice of Privacy Practices link.
To exercise any of your
rights, please obtain the required forms from the Privacy
Official and submit your request in writing.
Changes to this Notice
We reserve the right to
change this notice and the revised or changed notice will be
effective for information we already have about you as well as
any information we receive in the future. The current notice
will be posted in the medical office and include the effective
date.
Complaints
If you believe your
privacy rights have been violated, you may file a complaint with
the medical office by contacting the main number and asking for
the Facility Privacy Official or with the Secretary of the
Department of Health and Human Services. To file a complaint
with the medical office, contact the Privacy Official. All
complaints must be submitted in writing.
You will not be penalized for filing a complaint.
Other Uses of Health Information
Other uses and disclosures
of health information not covered by this notice or the laws
that apply to us will be made only with your written permission.
If you provide us permission to use or disclose health
information about you, you may revoke that permission, in
writing, at any time.
If you revoke your
permission, we will no longer use or disclose health information
about you for the reasons covered by your written authorization.
You understand that we are unable to take back any disclosures
we have already made with your permission, and that we are
required to retain our records of the care that we provided to
you and documented in the doctor's office or clinic.
________________________________________________________________________
Frisco Primary Care, P.A. Web Site Privacy
Policy
Introduction.
We have created this Privacy Policy in order to demonstrate our
firm commitment to privacy and to disclose our practices in
gathering, using and disclosing personal information in
connection with this Web site. Personal information is
information about a person that includes identifying information
about that person. Although there are links from this Site to
other Web sites, this Privacy Policy applies only to this Site
and not to Web sites operated by others. For example, if you
click on a link to the Web site of one of our partners or
sponsors, the click takes you out of our Site. We are not
responsible for the content or privacy practices of other Web
sites.
1. Openness. We follow a general policy of openness
regarding our privacy practices. This Privacy Policy sets out
the fair information practices that govern the collection,
maintenance, use and disclosure of personal information
regarding visitors who use this Site.
2. Revisions to the Privacy Policy. We may revise this
Privacy Policy from time to time as we add new features or as
laws change that may affect our services. If we make material
changes to this Privacy Policy, we will post a new version
number at the beginning of this Privacy Policy, consisting of
the date (year and month) the Policy was last revised, so that
you will be able to tell when the Privacy Policy was last
changed.
3. Collection of Personal Information. Except as
disclosed in this Policy or as disclosed on other pages in this
site where information may be collected, we do not collect
personal information about visitors to this Site.
a. Web logs. We maintain standard Web logs that
record data about all visitors who use this Site. These logs may
contain:
i. The
Internet domain from which you access this Site (e.g., aol.com,
abc.org);
ii. Your Internet Protocol (IP)
address. Your computer is automatically assigned a number which
acts as its IP address when you surf the Internet. Your IP
address is either static (always stays the same) or dynamic
(changes from time to time). A static IP address may be
identifiable to you, while a dynamic address is usually not
identifiable.
iii. The type of browser and
operating system you use.
iv. The date and time you visited
the Site.
v. The pages that you saw on this
Site.
vi. The address of the Web site you
linked here from.
We use Web log information to help us design
our Site, to identify popular features, and to make the Site
more useful for visitors. Web logs are recorded in sequential
files, and we do not normally try to identify individuals from
Web logs or use Web logs to gather information about
individuals. However, we may use Web logs to identify any
person attempting to break into or damage our Site, and we may
share Web log information with law enforcement agencies if we
believe that we have evidence of a violation of computer
security or related laws.
b. Internet Cookies. We may
place Internet cookies on visitors computer hard drives.
Internet cookies save data about individuals, such as their
name, user-name and the pages they visit on our Site. When a
visitor with one of our cookies on his or her computer revisits
our Site, we are able to recognize that computer and tailor our
Site to be more helpful and efficient for that visitor. Also,
cookies help us to provide streamlined services, and to document
our transactions with visitors to this Site. You may have
software on your computer that will allow you to decline or
deactivate Internet cookies, but if you do so, some features of
this Site may not work properly for you.
c. Visitor /Customer Requests for
Information. If you ask a question or make a request
through this Web site, we may store your message and our
response for awhile. We may also use this information, and any
information you give to us in response to a survey on the Site,
to send you information about health-related newsletters,
promotional events and upcoming programs that we think you might
be interested in; notices of enhancements to our services;
additional surveys; and to send you an e-mail version of our
physician contact information.
4. Access, Correction, Deletion and Data
Integrity. Requests to access, correct or delete personal
information may be submitted using our contact information.
Please note that we do not consider Web log information to be
personal information. Also, we may not be able to delete or
revise information about you that we have relied upon to provide
services to you, or that we are legally required to maintain.
5. Use and Disclosure of Personal
Information. We do not sell or rent personal information
about visitors to this Site. We do not use or disclose personal
information obtained through this Site except as expressly
described in this Policy. No patient identifying information
will be shared or transmitted on this Site.
a. Uses. We use information
obtained from weblogs, cookies and visitor requests for the
purposes described in this Policy. We also use personal
information obtained from this Site to respond to requests,
improve our services, demonstrate the quality of our services to
our auditors and government agencies that have authority over
us, and for the additional purposes described below.
b. Disclosures. We may disclose
personal information to any person performing audit, legal,
operational or other services for us. Whenever possible, we
will require any recipient of personal information for these
purposes to agree in writing to use the information only for the
purpose for which it was disclosed and to destroy or return it
when no longer needed for that purpose. We may disclose
personal information when required to do so by a subpoena, court
order, or search warrant. Except when deemed by us to be
infeasible, we will notify the individual of a subpoena, court
order or search warrant for the individual information, by
e-mail using the e-mail address (if any) that the individual
provided to us.
We may disclose personal information as we
deem appropriate to protect the safety of an individual or for
an investigation related to public safety or to report an
activity that appears to be in violation of law.
We may disclose personal information to
protect the security and reliability of this Web site, and to
take precautions against liability.
We may disclose personal information to any
successor in interest (any company or organization that
purchases or otherwise takes over our assets).
6. Public Forums. From time to time
this Site may contain message boards and/or news groups
(“Forums”). Please remember that any information disclosed in
these areas becomes publicly available. You should exercise
caution when deciding to disclose your personal information in
these areas. We do not maintain or routinely monitor information
posted on any message board or news group on our Site; however,
we reserve the right to remove any postings that we deem
inappropriate.
7. Security. We protect the
personal information we have collected from this Site by using
industry standard security precautions against loss and
unauthorized access, destruction, use, modification or
disclosure of that information.We comply with the security
safeguards detailed in our computer security policies and
procedures, and routinely monitor that compliance. When credit
card or other financial information is transmitted over the
Internet we use industry standard, SSL (secure socket layer)
encryption to protect that information.
8. Children. We do not intend to
collect personal information from anyone under age 18. Visitors
who wish to participate on our Site and provide personal
information indicating that they are under 18 years of age are
required to provide the contact information of their parent or
guardian. We then send an e-mail message to that parent or
guardian alerting them to the child’s request to participate on
our Site. We will delete all information about that visitor from
our system as quickly as possible. No information collected from
users under the age of 18 is used for any marketing or
promotional purposes whatsoever.
9. Questions, Complaints or Requests to
Change Information If at any time you wish to contact us
with a question or complaint or to exercise any of the rights
set out in this Privacy Policy, or if you want to change any
information collected by us, you may do so by contacting us by
e-mail, telephone, fax, or U.S. Mail, using the information set
out below.
As a high quality network
of healthcare providers and healthcare information on the Web,
we are continually trying to improve our site. We encourage you
to contact us with any suggestions for improving our site so
that we can better serve you in the future. Thank you for
visiting with us.
Advertising Policy
Advertisement and
Sponsorship Identification
We believe it is important for you to be able to distinguish
advertisements from health information. For this reason,
advertisements and sponsorships are clearly identified as being
separate from our consumer health information.
Advertising Click Through
If you click on an advertisement or link, you will be leaving
the site and entering another site. Your computer may receive
cookies from other sites and you will not be protected by our
Privacy Policy. These sites may place a cookie on your computer
for the purposes of ad tracking and presentation. We do not
share personally identifiable visitor information with any
advertising services. We may share anonymous aggregated
statistical information about uses of this Site.
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