NOTICE OF PRIVACY

Advanced Chiropractic and Applied Kinesiology is dedicated to ensuring the privacy of your protected health information (PHI). The office is required by law to provide you with this notice of privacy practices, and to inform you of your rights, and our obligations, concerning your PHI. We are required to follow the privacy practices described below while this notice is in effect.

The following sections describe different ways that we may use or disclose your PHI. For each section of uses or disclosures, there will be a description given. Some information, such as certain drug and alcohol information, HIV information and mental health information is entitled to special restrictions related to its use and disclosure. Not every use or disclosure will be listed and disclose information, however, will fall within one of the following categories.

TREATMENT
We may disclose your PHI to another healthcare facility and/or healthcare provider, transport company, community agency, family member or other third party to provide and/or coordinate health care services and treatments.

PAYMENT
We may use and/or disclose your PHI to bill and obtain payment for treatment and/or services you receive at the College’s healthcare facilities.

HEALTH CARE OPERATIONS
We may use and disclose your PHI in connection with our healthcare operations. Healthcare operations include, but are not limited to; clinical education, quality assessment and improvement activities, reviewing the competence or qualifications of healthcare professionals, evaluating practitioner and provider performance.

APPOINTMENT REMINDERS
We may contact you to remind you that you have an appointment here or other healthcare facilities.

INDIVIDUALS INVOLVED IN YOUR CARE OR PAYMENT
Unless there is a specific request made to and agreed to by the Privacy Officer at your location/facility, we may disclose PHI to a person who is involved in your health care or helps pay for your care, such as a family member or friend to facilitate that person’s involvement in caring for you or in payment for your care.

AS REQUIRED BY LAW
We will disclose health information about you when required to do so by federal or state law.

LAWSUITS AND OTHER LEGAL ACTION
We may disclose PHI in response to judicial proceedings and law enforcement inquiries as permitted by law. We may also disclose PHI in response to a subpeona, discovery request, warrant, summons or other lawful process.

ACCESS TO YOUR PHI
You have the right to access, inspect, and/or receive paper and/or electronic copies of the PHI that we maintain about you, with limited exceptions.
If you request paper copies, we will charge you our standard copying fee for each page, and postage if you want the copies mailed to you. If you request an alternative format, we will charge a reasonable cost-based fee for providing your PHI in that format. If you prefer, we will prepare a summary or an explanation of your PHI for a fee.

RESTRICTIONS ON USE AND DISCLOSURE OF YOUR PHI
You have the right to request that we place additional restrictions on our use or disclosure of your PHI for treatment, payment, and healthcare operations purposes. Depending on the circumstances of your request, we may or may not agree to those restrictions. If we do agree to your requested restrictions, we must abide by those restrictions, except in emergency treatment scenarios.

AMENDMENTS TO YOUR RECORDS
You have the right to request that we amend your PHI. Such requests must be made in writing, and must explain why the information should be amended. We are not obligated to make all requested amendments, but will give each request careful consideration. All amendment requests, in order to be considered by us, must be in writing and signed by you or your representative, and must state the reasons for the amendment correction request. If an amendment or correction you request is made by us, we may also notify others who work with us and have copies of the uncorrected record if we believe that such notification is necessary. Please note that even if we accept your request, we may not delete any information already documented in your health records.