Viewpoint Dual Recovery Center Privacy Policy

This is the website of Viewpoint Dual Recovery Center

Effective Date: October 2018

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.

We understand the importance of privacy and are committed to maintaining the confidentiality of your medical information.  We make a record of the medical care we provide and may receive such records from others.  We use these records to provide or enable other health care providers to provide quality medical care, to obtain payment for services provided to you as allowed by your health plan and to enable us to meet our professional and legal obligations to operate this medical practice properly. We are required by law to maintain the privacy of protected health information (PHI), to provide individuals with notice of our legal duties and privacy practices with respect to protected health information, and to notify affected individuals following a breach of unsecured protected health information. This notice describes how we may use and disclose your medical information. It also describes your rights and our legal obligations with respect to your medical information. 

1. How This Medical Practice May Use or Disclose Your Health Information

The law permits us to use or disclose your health information for the following purposes:

1. Treatment. we may use or disclose your PHI for treatment purposes. Treatment includes diagnosis, treatment and other services, including discharge planning. For example, counselors may disclose your PHI to each other to coordinate individual and group therapy sessions for your treatment, or information about treatment alternatives or other health-related benefits and services that are necessary or may be of interest to you.
2. Payment. We use and disclose medical information about you to obtain payment for the services we provide.  For example, we give your health plan the information it requires before it will pay us.  We may also disclose information to other health care providers to assist them in obtaining payment for services they have provided to you.
3. Health Care Operations. We may use or disclose your PHI for the purposes of health care operations that include internal administration and planning and various activities that improve the quality and effectiveness of care. For example, we may use information about your care to evaluate the quality and competence of our clinical staff. We may disclose information to qualified personnel for outcome evaluation, management audits, financial audits, or organizational evaluation; however, such personnel may not identify, directly or indirectly, any individual patient in any report of such audit or evaluation, or otherwise disclose patient identities in any manner. We may disclose your information as needed within our organization to resolve any complaints or issues arising regarding your care. We may also disclose your PHI to an agent or agency which provides services to us under a qualified service organization agreement and/or business associate agreement, in which they agree to abide by applicable federal law and related regulations (42 CFR Part 2 and HIPAA).
4. Appointment Reminders. We may discuss with the client reminder notices of future appointments for your treatment or continuous care, recovery coach, or aftercare appointment reminders.
5. Sign-In Sheet. We may use and disclose medical information about you by having you sign-in for therapeutic groups.
6. Notification and Communication. We may contact you post-discharge from treatment. If we are unable to contact you, the patient, personally, we may attempt to contact family members with whom we have signed authorizations to disclose PHI with, to verify your well-being.
7. Marketing. Provided we do not receive any payment for making these communications, we may contact you to give you information about products or services related to your treatment, case management or care coordination, or to direct or recommend other treatments, therapies, health care providers or settings of care that may be of interest to you. We will not otherwise use or disclose your medical information for marketing purposes or accept any payment for other marketing communications without your prior written authorization. The authorization will disclose whether we receive any compensation for any marketing activity you authorize, and we will stop any future marketing activity to the extent you revoke that authorization.
8. Sale of Health Information. We will not sell your health information without your prior written authorization. The authorization will disclose that we will receive compensation for your health information if you authorize us to sell it, and we will stop any future sales of your information to the extent that you revoke that authorization.
9. Required by Law. As required by law, we will use and disclose your health information, but we will limit our use or disclosure to the relevant requirements of the law.  When the law requires us to report abuse, neglect or domestic violence, or respond to judicial or administrative proceedings, or to law enforcement officials, we will further comply with the requirement set forth below concerning those activities.
10. Public Health. We may, and are sometimes required by law, to disclose your health information to public health authorities for purposes related to:  preventing or controlling disease, injury or disability; reporting child, elder or dependent adult abuse or neglect; reporting domestic violence; reporting to the Food and Drug Administration problems with products and reactions to medications; and reporting disease or infection exposure.  When we report suspected elder or dependent adult abuse or domestic violence, we will inform you or your personal representative promptly unless in our best professional judgment, we believe the notification would place you at risk of serious harm or would require informing a personal representative we believe is responsible for the abuse or harm.
11. Health Oversight Activities. We may, and are sometimes required by law, to disclose your health information to health oversight agencies during the course of audits, investigations, inspections, licensure and other proceedings, subject to the limitations imposed by law.
12. Judicial and Administrative Proceedings. We may, and are sometimes required by law, to disclose your health information in the course of any administrative or judicial proceeding to the extent expressly authorized by a court or administrative order. We may also disclose information about you in response to a subpoena, discovery request or other lawful process if reasonable efforts have been made to notify you of the request and you have not objected, or if your objections have been resolved by a court or administrative order.
13. Law Enforcement. We may, and are sometimes required by law, to disclose your health information to a law enforcement official for purposes such as identifying or locating a suspect, fugitive, material witness or missing person, complying with a court order, warrant, grand jury subpoena and other law enforcement purposes.
14. Coroners. We may, and are often required by law, to disclose your health information to coroners in connection with their investigations of deaths.
15. Organ or Tissue Donation. We may disclose your health information to organizations involved in procuring, banking or transplanting organs and tissues.
16. Public Safety. We may, and are sometimes required by law, to disclose your health information to appropriate persons in order to prevent or lessen a serious and imminent threat to the health or safety of a particular person or the general public.
17. Specialized Government Functions. We may disclose your health information for military or national security purposes or to correctional institutions or law enforcement officers that have you in their lawful custody.
18. Workers’ Compensation. We may disclose your health information as necessary to comply with workers’ compensation laws.  For example, to the extent your care is covered by workers’ compensation, we will make periodic reports to your employer about your condition.  We are also required by law to report cases of occupational injury or occupational illness to the employer or workers’ compensation insurer.
19. Change of Ownership. In the event that this organization is sold or merged with another organization, your health information/record will become the property of the new owner, although you will maintain the right to request that copies of your health information be transferred to another organization.
20. Breach Notification. In the case of a breach of unsecured protected health information, we will notify you as required by law. If you have provided us with a current e-mail address, we may use e-mail to communicate information related to the breach. In some circumstances our business associate may provide the notification. We may also provide notification by other methods as appropriate.
21. Psychotherapy Notes. We will not use or disclose your psychotherapy notes without your prior written authorization except for the following: 1) use by the originator of the notes for your treatment, 2) for training our staff, students and other trainees, 3) to defend ourselves if you sue us or bring some other legal proceeding, 4) if the law requires us to disclose the information to you or the Secretary of HHS or for some other reason, 5) in response to health oversight activities concerning your psychotherapist, 6) to avert a serious and imminent threat to health or safety, or 7) to the coroner or medical examiner after you die. To the extent you revoke an authorization to use or disclose your psychotherapy notes, we will stop using or disclosing these notes.
22. Research. We may use or disclose your PHI without your consent or authorization for research purposes, which will generally be presented in a ‘de-identified’ manner, which maintains certain levels of confidentiality and data safeguards.

B. When This Medical Practice May Not Use or Disclose Your Health Information

Except as described in this Notice of Privacy Practices, this organization will, consistent with its legal obligations, not use or disclose health information which identifies you without your written authorization.  If you do authorize this organization to use or disclose your health information for another purpose, you may revoke your authorization in writing at any time.

C. Your Health Information Rights

1. Right to Request Special Privacy Protections. You have the right to request restrictions on certain uses and disclosures of your health information by a written request specifying what information you want to limit, and what limitations on our use or disclosure of that information you wish to have imposed.  If you tell us not to disclose information to your commercial health plan concerning health care items or services for which you paid for in full out-of-pocket, we will abide by your request, unless we must disclose the information for treatment or legal reasons. We reserve the right to accept or reject any other request and will notify you of our decision.
2. Right to Request Confidential Communications. You have the right to request that you receive your health information in a specific way or at a specific location.  For example, you may ask that we send information to a particular e-mail account or to your work address.  We will comply with all reasonable requests submitted in writing which specify how or where you wish to receive these communications.
3. Right to Inspect and Copy. You have the right to inspect and copy your health information, with limited exceptions.  To access your medical information, you must submit a written request detailing what information you want access to, whether you want to inspect it or get a copy of it, and if you want a copy, your preferred form and format.  We will provide copies in your requested form and format if it is readily producible, or we will provide you with an alternative format you find acceptable, or if we can’t agree and we maintain the record in an electronic format, your choice of a readable electronic or hardcopy format. We will also send a copy to any other person you designate in writing. We will charge a reasonable fee which covers our costs for labor, supplies, postage, and if requested and agreed to in advance, the cost of preparing an explanation or summary. We may deny your request under limited circumstances.  If we deny your request to access your records, you will have a right to appeal our decision.
4. Right to Amend or Supplement. You have a right to request that we amend your health information that you believe is incorrect or incomplete.  You must make a request to amend in writing and include the reasons you believe the information is inaccurate or incomplete.  We are not required to change your health information and will provide you with information about this denial and how you can disagree with the denial.  We may deny your request if we do not have the information, if we did not create the information (unless the person or entity that created the information is no longer available to make the amendment), if you would not be permitted to inspect or copy the information at issue, or if the information is accurate and complete as is.  If we deny your request, you may submit a written statement of your disagreement with that decision, and we may, in turn, prepare a written rebuttal. All information related to any request to amend will be maintained and disclosed in conjunction with any subsequent disclosure of the disputed information.
5. Right to an Accounting of Disclosures. You have a right to receive an accounting of disclosures of your health information made by this organization, except that this organization does not have to account for the disclosures provided to you or pursuant to your written authorization, or as described in paragraphs 1 (treatment), 2 (payment), 3 (health care operations), 6 (notification and communication) and 17 (specialized government functions) of Section A of this Notice of Privacy Practices or disclosures for purposes of research or public health which exclude direct patient identifiers, or which are incident to a use or disclosure otherwise permitted or authorized by law, or the disclosures to a health oversight agency or law enforcement official to the extent this organization has received notice from that agency or official that providing this accounting would be reasonably likely to impede their activities.
6. Right to Receive Copy of this Notice. Upon request, you may obtain a paper copy of this Notice of Privacy Practices.
7. Changes to this Notice of Privacy Practices

We reserve the right to amend this Notice of Privacy Practices at any time in the future.  Until such amendment is made, we are required by law to comply with the terms of this Notice currently in effect.  After an amendment is made, the revised Notice of Privacy Protections will apply to all protected health information that we maintain, regardless of when it was created or received.  We will keep a copy of the current notice posted and a copy will be available at each appointment. We will also post the current notice on our website.

1. Complaints

Complaints about this Notice of Privacy Practices or how this organization handles your health information should be directed to our Privacy Officer listed at the bottom of this Notice of Privacy Practices. We will not retaliate or take action against you for filing a complaint.

You may also feel free to file a written complaint with the Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services. Upon request, we will provide you with the correct address.

PRIVACY OFFICER CONTACT INFORMATION

Privacy Officer
702 W Hillside Avenue,
Prescott, Arizona 86301
Phone: (928) 778-5907
Fax: (928) 778-5908