NOTICE OF PRIVACY PRACTICES
This notice describes how medical information about you may be used and disclosed and how you can get access to this information. Please review it carefully.
This notice is being provided to you in accordance with the requirement of the standard for privacy of individually identifiable health information after health insurance portability and accountability act (The “HIPAA privacy rules”) and by the amendments to the HIPAA privacy the rules made by the health information technology for economic and clinical Health Act of 2009 (the “HITECH Act”) and by the final HIPAA OMNIBUS rule effective on September 23,2013.
I. WE HAVE LEGAL DUTY TO SAFEGUARD YOUR PROTECTED HEALTH INFORMATION (PHI):
We are legally required to protect the privacy of your health information. We call this information “protected health information” or “PHI” for abbreviation and it includes information that can be used to identify you, that we have created or received about your past, present or future health or condition, the provision of health care to you, or the payment of this healthcare. PHI also includes “genetic information” as that term is defined in the HIPAA Privacy Rules.
We must provide you with this notice about our privacy practices that explains how, when, and why we use and disclose your PHI. With some exceptions, we may not use or disclose any more of your PHI than is necessary to accomplish the purpose of the use or disclosure. We are legally required to follow the privacy practices that are described in this notice. We prohibit our medical staff and patients from the use of cell phone, cameras, video equipment or recording devices in connection with any patient encounter or anywhere within our office premises without express permission from our patients in advance.
However, we reserve the right to change the terms of this notice and our privacy policies at any time. Any changes will apply to the PHI we already have. Before we make an important change to our policies, we will promptly change this notice and post a new notice in the waiting area. You can also request a copy of this notice from the office receptionist in the office where your appointment is scheduled and can review a copy of the notice on our website at www.dallasarthritis.com.
II. How we may use and disclose your PHI:
we use and disclose health information for many different reasons. We are not required to obtain your consent or authorization to make uses or disclosure of your PHI for the primary purposes and other possible uses described in the subsection A&B below, and in certain other very limited situations. In some cases, as described in the subsection C&D, you may be given an opportunity to agree or object before the use or disclosure is made. However as described in the subsection E below, your prior written authorization is required before we can use or disclose your PHI for most other purposes. Below, we describe the different categories for our uses and disclosures and give you some examples of each category.
A. Primary uses and disclosure of PHI:
1. For treatment: We may disclose your PHI to physicians, nurses, medical assistant, medical students, and other healthcare personnel who provide you with the healthcare services or are involved in your care. For example, if you require infusions for your medical care, we may disclose your PHI to the infusion company.
2. To obtain payment for treatment: We may use and disclose your PHI in order to bill and collect payment of the treatment and services provided to you. For example, we may provide portion of your PHI to our billing department and your health plan to get paid for the health care services we provided to you. We may also provide your PHI to our business associates such as billing company, claim processing companies, and other that process our healthcare claims.
3. For healthcare operations: We may disclose your PHI in order to operate our clinical facilities. For example, we may use your PHI in order to evaluate the quality of healthcare services that you received or to evaluate the performance of the healthcare professionals who provided health care services to you. We may also provide your PHI to our accountants, attorneys, consultant and other in order to make sure we are complying with the laws that affect us. It may be necessary to provide PHI for purposes of obtaining malpractice insurance.
4. Appointment reminders and health related benefits or services. We may use PHI to provide appointment reminders or give you information about treatment alternatives, or other healthcare services or benefits we offer.
5. Fundraising activities: We may use we tried to raise funds for our organization. The money raised through these activities is used to expand and support the healthcare services and educational programs we provide to the community. If you do not wish to be contacted as part of our fundraising efforts, please notify us in writing and we will not use or disclose your information for these purposes.
B: Other possible uses and disclosure of PHI:
1: Disclosure is required by federal state or local law, judicial or administrative proceedings or law enforcement: For example, we may disclosure when a law requires that we report information to government agencies and law enforcement personnel about victims of abuse, neglect or domestic violence come on man dealing with gunshot and other wounds, or when ordered in judicial or administrative proceedings.
2. For public health activities: For example, we report information about deaths and various diseases to government officials in charge for collecting their information and we provide coroners, medical examiner, funeral directors necessary information relating to an individual's death.
3. For health oversight activities: For example, we will provide information to assist the government when it conducts an investigation or inspection of a healthcare provider or organization.
4. To corners, medical examiner, funeral directors or for the purpose of organ donation: We may disclose PHI to a coroner or medical examiner for purpose of identifying a disease person, determining cause of the death, or the coroner or medical examiner to perform other duties authorized by law. We may also disclose information to funeral directors, as authorized by organization to assist them in organ, or tissue donation and transplants.
5. For research purposes: In certain circumstances we may provide PHI, in order to conduct medical research.
6. To avoid harm: In order to avoid serious threat to the health or safety of a person or the public we may provide PHI to law enforcement personnel/persons able to prevent or lessen such harm.
7. For specific government functions: We may disclose PHI of military personnel and veteran in certain situations. And we may disclose PHI for national security purposes. 8. For workers compensation purposes: We may provide PHI in order to comply with workers compensation laws.
9. Lawsuit and disputes: If you are involved in a lawsuit or dispute, we may disclose health information about you and response to a quote or administrative order previous subject to all applicable legal requirements, we may disclose health information about you in response to a subpoena.
10. Family and friends: We may disclose your health information to your family members or close friends if we obtain verbal agreement to do so or if we give you the opportunity to object to such disclosure and you do not raise an objection. We may also disclose health information to your family or friends if we infer from the circumstances, based on our personal judgment that you would not object. For example, we may assume that you agree to our disclosure of your personal health information to your spouse when you bring your spouse with you into the exam room during treatment or when treatment is discussed. In situation where you are not capable of giving consent, (because you are not present or due to incapacity or medical emergency), we may determine, using our professional judgment that a disclosure to your family member or friend is in your best interest. We will disclose only health and information relevant to the persons involvement in your care.
C. PARTICIPATION IN A HEALTH INFORMATION EXCHANGE (HIE):
As part of our healthcare operations, we intend to participate in an electronic (HIE), which is a local or regional arrangement of of healthcare organization and providers who have agreed to work with each other to facilitate access to health care information that may be relevant to your care. For example, if you are admitted to facility on an emergency basis and cannot provide important information about your health condition, the HIE will allow participating providers access to your pertinent health information shared from your various providers so that they may be more quickly able to offer you appropriate treatment. When it is needed, ready access to your health information means better care for you. Once we begin participation in an HIE, we will retain healthcare information (including PHI) about our patients in a shared electronic medical record with our healthcare providers who also participate in the HIE.
We intend that your PHI be used responsibly by our organization as well as the organization we are affiliated with such that data will be encrypted and stored within a secured network and if your PHI is transmitted, it will be done over a private secure network, with administrative, physical and technical safeguard in accordance with this Notice and the law.
If you choose not to participate in the electronic HIE, you will be given an opportunity to opt out of the HIE. If you later change your mind, you will be given opportunity to opt back into the HIE. D. “OPTING-OUT” OR “OPTING-BACK” INTO THE HEALTH INFORMATION EXCHANGE HIE:
If you opt-out of the HIE, Health information will continue to be used in accordance with this Notice and the law, but will NOT be made available through HIE even in medical emergencies. Your choice for opting-out or opting-back into the HIE will have to have to be made by a written request. The necessary form to enable you to do so will be provided by the staff at any of our medical office practice site upon your request.
E. ANY OTHER USES AND DISCLOSURE OF PHI MAY REQUIRE PRIOR WRITTEN AUTHORIZATION:
In most situation not described in the subsections A&B above, we will ask for your written authorization before using or disclosing any your PHI. If you choose to sign an authorization permitting us to use or disclose your PHI, you can later revoke that authorization and writing to stop any future uses and disclosures (to the extent that we haven't taken any action relying on the authorization). In some instances, we may need a specific written authorization from you in order to disclose certain type of specially protected health information such as HIV results, substance abuse and mental health records, and genetic testing information for purposes such as treatment, payment and healthcare operations.
III. WHAT RIGHTS YOU HAVE REGARDING YOUR PHI
You have following rights with respect to your PHI:
A. The right to request limits on users and disclosure of your PHI: You have right to ask that we limit how we use and disclose your PHI. We will consider your request, but we are not legally required to accept it unless the requested restriction involves a disclosure to a health plan for purposes of carrying out payment or healthcare operations and you have paid out-of-pocket and in full for the item or service to which the disclosure relates. If we accept your request, we will pull any limits in writing and abide by them except in emergency situations. You may not limit the uses and disclosure that we are legally required or allowed to make.
B. The right to choose how we send PHI to you: You have right to ask that we send information to you to an alternative address(for example, sending information to your work address rather than your home address).We must agree to your request so long as we can easily provide it in the form that you requested.
C. The right to see and get copies of your PHI: In most cases, you have right to look at or get copies of your PHI that we have, but you must make a request in writing. If we do not have your PHI but we know who does, we will tell you how to get it. We will respond to you within 15 business days after receiving your return request. In certain situations, we may deny your request. If we do, we will tell you in writing, our reasons for the denial and explain your right to have the denial reviewed. You have the right to request a copy of your health information in electronic format. A physician may charge “a reasonable fee” for copying medical records, and the Texas State Board of Medical Examiner has clarified the interpretation of “reasonable” to be charged of no more than $25 for the first 20 pages and $.15 per page thereafter.
D. The right to get a list of disclosures we have made: You have the right to get a list of instances in which we have disclosed your PHI. The list will not include users and disclosure that you have already consented to, such as those made for treatment, payment, or healthcare operations, directly to you or to your family. The list also won't include users and disclosure made for national security purposes, to correction or law enforcement personnel or before May 31, 2016.
We will respond within 60 days of receiving your request. The list will include the date of the disclosure, to whom PHI was disclosed (including the address, if known), a description of the information disclosed, and the reason for the disclosure. We will provide the list to you at no charge, but if you make more than one request in the same year, we will charge you according to our fee schedule for each additional request.
E. The right to correct or update your PHI: If you believe that there's a mistake in your PHI or that a piece of important information is missing, you have right to request that we correct the existing information or add the missing information. You must provide the request and your reason for the request and writing. We will respond within 60 days of receiving your request. We may deny your request in writing if the PHI (i) correct and complete(ii) not created by us, (iii) not allowed to be disclosed, or(iv) not part of our record. Our written denial will state the reason for the denial and explain your right to file a written statement of disagreement with the denial. If you do not file one, you have right to request that your request and our denial be attached to all future disclosures of your PHI. If we approve your request, we will make the change to your PHI, tell you that we have done it, and tell others that need to know about the change to your PHI.
F. The right to notified in the event of a “breach” of unsecured PHI: We make every effort to secure the privacy of your PHI, if however, there's an unauthorized acquisition, use or access of your unsecured PHI that is a “reportable breach” (under the “HITECH” Act and the Omnibus Rule), we will notify you in writing within 60 days. That notification will explain the incident, the steps we are taking to lessen any harm that might be caused by the incident, and any steps you should take to provide protect yourself from any potential harm resulting from the incident. If you may have any questions about your procedures in the event of a breach of your unsecured PHI, please contact Dallas Arthritis and Autoimmune Disease Center Privacy Officer.
G. The right to get this notice by e-mail: you have right to get a copy of this notice by e-mail. Even if you have agreed to receive the notice via e-mail, you also have the right to request a paper copy of this Notice.
IV. How to complain about our privacy practice: If you think that we have violated your privacy rights or you disagree with the decision we made about your access to your PHI, you may file a complaint with the ongoing person/ persons. We will take no retaliatory action against you if you file a complaint about our privacy practices.
Dallas Arthritis and Autoimmune Disease Center Privacy Officer:
Pooja Kumari
425 North Highland Ave. STE 200
McKinney TX 75092
(Ph) 903-508-4230
Office for Civil Rights:
Office of Civil Rights U.S. Department of Health and Human services
Region VI
Regional manager
1301 Young St. STE. 1169 Dallas TX 75202
(800)368-1019
FAX 214-767-0432
V. EFFECTIVE DATE OF THIS NOTICE
This notice went into effect on November 1st ,2021