Beginning in 2003, a federal program called the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) requires us to tell you how we protect the privacy of medical and other information about you.
This "individually identifiable health information" (IIHI), also called "protected health information (PHI), includes your medical condition, the services and treatments we order or provide for you, as well as your address, date of birth, social security number and many other items of personal information.
We are allowed to release this information for treatment, payment and other healthcare operations without your specific consent, but we must provide you with a notice of these uses. Other disclosures of your protected information will require your specific consent before we can provide this information. Some of these items now appear on our Patient Registration Form.
HIPAA also has provided you with significant new rights of access and control of your "individually identifiable health information." Our Notice of Privacy Practices (below) is part of a larger document containing our Privacy Policies and Procedures. You may request an appointment to review our complete Privacy Policies and Procedures or discuss them with our Privacy Officer. As the Federal and State laws change, we must update these documents and keep them current.
If you have any questions, please contact our Privacy Officer, Kathy Anderson, at (269) 381-4577 or toll-free at 1-800-211-0666.