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THIS NOTICE APPLIES TO ALL OF THE RECORDS OF YOUR CARE GENERATED BY THE PRACTICE, WHETHER MADE BY THE PRACTICE OR AN ASSOCIATED FACILITY.

This notice describes our Practice’s policies, which extend to:

· Any health care professional authorized to enter information into your chart (including physicians, PAs, RNs, technicians, etc.);

· All areas of the practice (front desk, administration, billing and collection, etc.);

· All employees, staff and other personnel that work for or with our practice;

· Our business associates (including a billing service, or facilities to which we refer patients), on-call physicians, and so on.

The practice provides this notice to comply with the privacy regulations issued by the Department of Health and Human Services in accordance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).

OUR THOUGHTS ABOUT YOUR PROTECTED HEALTH INFORMATION:

We understand that your medical information is personal to you, and we are committed to protecting the information about you. As our patient, we create paper and electronic medical records about your health, our care for you, and the services and/or items we provide to you as our patient. We need this record to provide for your care and to comply with certain legal requirements.

We are required by law to:

· make sure that the protected health information about you is kept private;

· provide you with a notice of our privacy practices and your legal rights with respect to protected health information about you; and

· follow the conditions of the notice that is currently in effect.

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HOW WE MAY USE AND DISCLOSE MEDICAL INFORMATION ABOUT YOU.

The following categories describe different ways that we use and disclose protected health information that we have and share with others. Each category of uses or disclosures provides a general explanation and provides some examples of uses. Not every use or disclosure in a category is either listed or actually in place. The explanation is provided for your general information only.

· Medical Treatment. We use previously given medical information about you to provide you with current or prospective medical treatment or services. Therefore we may, and most likely will, disclose medical information about you to doctors, nurses, technicians, medical students, or hospital personnel who are involved in taking care of you. For example, a doctor to whom we refer you for ongoing or further care may need your medical record. Different areas of the Practice also may share medical information about you including your record(s), prescriptions, requests of lab work and x-rays. We also may disclose medical information about you to people outside the practice who may be involved in your medical care after you leave the practice; this may include your family members, or other personal representatives authorized by you or by a legal mandate (a guardian or other person who has been named to handle your medical decisions, should you become incompetent).

· Payment. We may use and disclose medical information about you for services and procedures so they may be billed and collected from you, an insurance company, or any other third party. For example, we may need to give your health care information, about treatment you received at the Practice, to obtain payment or reimbursement for the care. We may also tell your health plan and/or referring physician about a treatment you are going to receive to obtain prior approval or to determine whether your plan will cover the treatment, to facilitate payment of a referring physician, or the like. State law requires us to get your authorization to disclose this information for payment purposes.

· Health Care Operations. We may use and disclose medical information about you so that we can run our Practice more efficiently and make sure that all of our patients receive quality care. These uses may include reviewing our treatment and services to evaluate the performance of our staff, deciding what additional services to offer, deciding what services are needed, and whether certain new treatments are effective. We may also disclose information to doctors, nurses, technicians, medical students, drug representatives and other personnel for review and learning purposes. We remove information that identifies you from this set of medical information so others may use it to study health care and health care delivery without learning who the specific patients are.

We may also use or disclose information about you for internal or external utilization, for purposes of helping us to comply with our legal requirements, to auditors to verify our records, to billing companies to aid us in this process and the like. We shall endeavor, at all times when business associates are used, to advise them of their continued obligation to maintain the privacy of your medical records.

· Appointment and Patient Recall Reminders. We may ask that you sign in writing at the Receptionists' Desk, a "Sign In" log on the day of your appointment with the Practice. We may use and disclose medical information to contact you as a reminder that you have an appointment for medical care with the Practice or that you are due to receive periodic care from the Practice. This contact may be by phone, in writing, or otherwise and may involve leaving a message on an answering machine, or otherwise, which could (potentially) be received or intercepted by others.

· For Disaster Relief Purposes. For example, we may share health information with disaster relief agencies to assist in notification of your condition to family or others.

· Research. Under certain circumstances, we may use and disclose medical information about you for research purposes regarding medications, efficiency of treatment protocols and the like. All research projects are subject to an approval process, which evaluates a proposed research project and its use of medical information. Before we use or disclose medical information for research, the project will have been approved through this research approval process.

· Required By Law. We will disclose medical information about you when required to do so by federal, state or local law.

· To Organ Procurement Organizations (tissue donation and transplant) or persons who obtain, store, or transplant organs.

· Workers' Compensation. We may release medical information about you for workers' compensation or similar programs. These programs provide benefits for work-related injuries or illness.

· Public Health Risks. Law or public policy may require us to disclose medical information about you for public health activities. These activities generally include the following:

· to prevent or control disease, injury or disability;

· to report deaths;

· to report child abuse or neglect;

· to report reactions to medications or problems with products;

· to notify people of recalls of products they may be using;

· to notify a person who may have been exposed to a disease or may be at risk for contracting or spreading a disease or condition;

· to notify the appropriate government authority if we believe a patient has been the victim of abuse, neglect or domestic violence. We will only make this disclosure if you agree or when required or authorized by law.

· Investigation and Government Activities. We may disclose medical information to a local, state or federal agency for activities authorized by law. These oversight activities include, for example, audits, investigations, inspections, and licensure. These activities are necessary for the payor, the government and other regulatory agencies to monitor the health care system, government programs, and compliance with civil rights laws.

· Lawsuits and Disputes. If you are involved in a lawsuit or a dispute, we may disclose medical information about you in response to a court or administrative order. This is particularly true if you make your health an issue. We may also use such information to defend ourselves or any member of our Practice in any actual or threatened action.

· Law Enforcement. We may release medical information if asked to do so by a law enforcement official:

· In response to a court order, subpoena, warrant, summons or similar process;

· About criminal conduct at the practice

· Coroners, Medical Examiners and Funeral Directors. We may release medical information to a coroner or medical examiner. This may be necessary, for example, to identify a deceased person or determine the cause of death. We may also release medical information about patients of the Practice to funeral directors as necessary to carry out their duties.

· To Correctional Institutions if you are in jail or prison, as necessary for your health and the health and safety of others.