Privacy Notice

HIPPA Notice of Patient Privacy Practices for Healthy Horizons Family Medicine

HIPPA is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, a Federal law that requires healthcare providers to take certain steps to protect the privacy and security of patient health information.

Healthy Horizons Family Medicine believes that your health information is personal and confidential.  We are committed to maintaining and keeping your health information private and confidential.  Any information given may be disclosed with proper authorization from you, the patient. 

The following are ways we may use and disclose medical information.

• We may use your medical information to provide you with medical treatment or services. 
• We may disclose medical information about you to doctors, nurses, medical assistants, technicians, medical students, or other people who are taking care of you.
• Your medical information may also be given to your other healthcare providers to assist them in treating you.
• We may also need to disclose your medical information for payment purposes to yourself or insurance company.
• We may also disclose to your medical information to a family member, other relative, close personal friend or any other person you identify, health information relevant to that person’s involvement in your care or payment related to your care.
• We may also disclose information to researchers when an institutional review board that has reviewed the research proposal, and established protocols to ensure the privacy of your health information has approved their research. 
• As required by law, we may disclose your health information to public health or legal authorities charged with preventing or controlling disease, injury, or disability.
• We may disclose health information for law enforcement purposes as required by federal, state or local law or in response to a valid subpoena.

This practice is required to maintain the privacy of your health information, provide you with a notice as to our legal duties and privacy practices with respect to information we gather and maintain about you, abide by the terms of this notice, notify you if we are unable to agree to a requested restriction, accommodate reasonable requests you may have to communicate health information by alternative means or at alternative locations.  We reserve the right to change our practices and to make the new provisions effective for all protected health information we maintain.  At no point will we use or disclose our health information without your written authorization, except as described in this notice.

Healthy Horizons Family Medicine will not use or disclose your health information for any purpose other than those identified in the previous sections without your specific, written Authorization. We must obtain your Authorization separate from any Consent we may have obtained from you. If you give us Authorization to use or disclose health information about you, you may revoke that Authorization, in writing, at any time. If you revoke your Authorization, we will no longer use or disclose information about you for the reasons covered by your written Authorization, but we cannot take back any uses or disclosures already made with your permission.

Effective Date:  April 9, 2003