Protected Health Information Privacy Notice
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.
Purpose of this Notice Cabell County EMS is required by law to maintain the privacy of certain confidential health care
information, known as Protected Health Information or PHI, and to provide you
with a notice of our legal duties and privacy practices with respect to your
PHI. This Notice describes your legal rights, advises you of our privacy practices, and lets you know how Cabell
County EMS is permitted to use and disclose PHI about you.
Cabell County EMS is also required to abide by
the terms of the version of this Notice currently in effect. In most situations we may use this
information as described in this Notice without your permission, but there are
some situations where we may use it only after we obtain your written
permission, if we are required by law to do so.
Uses and Disclosures of PHI: Cabell County EMS
may use PHI for the purpose of treatment, payment and health care operation, in
most cases without your written permission.
Examples of our use of your PHI:
For treatment, This
includes such things as verbal and written information that we obtain about you
and use pertaining to your medical condition and treatment provided to you by
us and other medical personnel (including doctors and nurses who give orders to
allow us to provide treatment to you). It also includes information we give to other health care personnel to
whom we transfer your care and treatment, and includes transfer of PHI via
radio or telephone to the hospital or dispatch center as well as providing the
hospital with a copy of the written record we create in the course of providing
you with the treatment and transport.
For payment, This includes any activities we must
undertake in order to get reimbursed for the services we provide you, including
such things as organizing your PHI and submitting bills to insurance companies
(either directly or through a third party billing company), management of the
billed claims for services rendered, medical necessity determinations, and
reviews, utilization review, and collection of outstanding accounts.
For health care operations, This includes quality assurance activities,
licensing, and training programs to ensure that our personnel meet our
standards of care and follow established policies and procedures, obtaining
legal and financial services, conducting business planning, processing
grievances and complaints, creating reports that do not individually identify
you for data collection purposes, fund raising, and certain marketing
activities.
Reminders for Scheduled Transports and Information on
Other Services We may also
contact you to provide you with a reminder of any scheduled appointments for
non-emergency ambulance and medical transportation, or for other information
about alternative services we provide or other health-related benefits and
services that may be of interest to you.
Use and Disclosure of PHI Without Your Authorization Cabell County EMS is permitted to use PHI without
your written authorization, or opportunity to object in certain situations,
including:
- For Cabell County EMS use in treating you or in obtaining payment for services provided to you
or in other health care operations;
- For the treatment activities of another health care provider;
- To another health care provider or entity for the payment of the provider or
entity that receives the information (such as your hospital or insurance
company);
- To another health care provider (such as the hospital to which you are
transported) for the health care operations activities of the entity that
receives relationship with you and the PHI pertains to that relationship;
- For health care fraud and abuse detection or for activities related to
compliance with the law;
- To a family member, other relative, or close personal friend or other
individual involved in your care if we obtain your verbal agreement to do
so or if we give you an opportunity to object to such a disclosure and you
do not raise an objection. We may
also disclose health information to your family, relatives, or friends if
we infer from the circumstances that you would not object. For example, we may assume you agree to
our disclosure of your personal health information to your spouse when
your spouse has called the ambulance for you. In situations where you are not capable
of objecting (because you are not present or due to your incapacity or
medical emergency), we may, in our professional judgment, determine that a
disclosure to your family member, relative, or friend is in your best
interest. In that situation, we with disclose only health information relevant to that person’s
involvement in your care. For example, we may inform the person who accompanied you in the ambulance
that you have certain symptoms and we may give that person an update on
your vital signs and treatment that is being administered by our ambulance
crew;
- To a public health authority in certain situations (such as reporting a birth,
death or disease as required by law, as part of a public health
investigation, to report child or adult abuse or neglect or domestic
violence, to report adverse events such as product defects, or to notify a
person about exposure to a possible communicable disease as required by
law;
- For health oversight activities including audits or government investigations,
inspections, disciplinary proceedings, and other administrative or
judicial actions undertaken by the government (or their contractors) by
law to oversee the health care system.
- For judicial and administrative proceedings as required by a court or
administrative order or in some cases in response to a subpoena or other
legal process;
- For law enforcement activities in limited situations, such as when there is a
warrant for the request, or when the information is needed to locate a
suspect or stop a crime;
- For military, national defense and security and other special government
functions;
- To avert a serious threat to the health and safety of a person or the public
at large;
- For workers’ compensation purposes, and in compliance with workers’
compensation laws;
- To coroners, medical examiners, and funeral directors for identifying a
deceased person, determining cause of death, or carrying on their duties
as authorized by law;
- If you are an organ donor, we may release health information to organizations
that handle organ procurement or organ, eye or tissue transplantation or
to an organ donation bank, as necessary to facilitate organ donation and
transplantation;
- For research projects, but this will be subject to strict oversight and
approvals and health information will be released only when there is
minimal risk to your privacy and adequate safeguards are in place in
accordance with the law;
- We may use or disclose health information about you in a way that does not
personally identify you or reveal who you are.
Any other use or disclosure of PHI, other that those listed
above with only be made with your written authorization, (the authorization
must specifically identify the information we seek to use or disclose, as well
as when and how we seek to use or disclose it). You may revoke your authorization
at any time, in writing, except to extent that we have already used or
disclosed medical information in reliance on that authorization.
Patient Rights: As a patient, you have a number of rights with respect to the protection
of your PHI, including:
The right to access, copy or inspect your PHI. This means you may come in to our offices and
inspect and copy most of the medical information about you that we
maintain. We will normally provide you
with access to this information within 30 days of your request. We may also charge you a reasonable fee for
you to copy any medical information that you have the right to access. In limited circumstances, we may deny you
access to your medical information, and you may appeal certain types of
denials. We have available forms to
request your PHI and we will provide a written response if we deny you access
and let you know your appeal rights. If
you wish to inspect and copy your medical information, you should contact the
privacy officer listed at the end of this Notice.
The right to amend your PHI. You have the right to ask
us to amend written medical information that we may have about you. We will generally amend your information
within 60 days of your request and will notify you when we have amended the
information. We are permitted by law to
deny your request to amend your medical information only in certain
circumstances, like when we believe the information you have asked us to amend
is incorrect. If you wish to request
that we amend the medical information that we have about you, you should
contact the privacy officer listed at the end of this Notice.
The right to request
an accounting of our use and disclosure of your PHI. You may request an accounting from us of
certain disclosures of your medical information that we have made in the last
six years prior to the date of your request. We are not required to give you an accounting of information we have
used or disclosed for purposes of treatment, payment or health care operations,
or when we share your health information with our business associates, like our
billing company or a medical facility from/to which we have transported you.
Cabell County EMS is also not required to give you an accounting of
our uses of protected health information for which you have already given us
written authorization. If you wish to
request an accounting of the medical information about you that we have used or
disclosed that is not exempted from the accounting requirement, you should
contact the privacy officer listed at the end of this Notice.
The right to request
that we restrict the uses and disclosures of your PHI. You have the right to request that we
restrict how we use and disclose your medical information that we have about
you for treatment, payment or health care operations, or to restrict the
information that is provided to family, friends and other individuals involved
in your health care. But if you request
a restriction and the information you asked us to restrict is needed to provide
you with emergency treatment, then we may use the PHI or disclose the PHI to a
health care provider to provide you with emergency treatment. Cabell County EMS
is not required to agree to any restrictions you request, but any restrictions
agreed to by Cabell County EMS are binding on Cabell County EMS.
Internet, Electronic Mail, and the Right to Obtain Copy of Paper Notice on Request. Cabell County EMS
maintains a web site where this document can be reviewed at your convenience in
its entirety. You may reproduce this document in a printer friendly format
to facilitate easier printing.
Revisions to this
Notice: Cabell County EMS
reserves the right to change the terms of this Notice at any time, and the
changes will be effective immediately and will apply to all protected health
information that we maintain. Any
material changes to the Notice will be promptly posted in our facilities and
posted to our web site. You may get a
copy of the latest version of this Notice by contacting the Privacy Officer.
Your Legal Rights and
Complaints: You also have the right
to complain to us, or to the Secretary of the United States Department of
Health and Human Services if you believe your privacy rights have been
violated. You will not be retaliated
against in any way for filing a complaint with us or to the government. Should you have any questions, comments or
complaints you may direct all inquiries to the privacy officer listed at the
end of this Notice. Individuals will not
be retaliated against for filing a complaint.
If you have any questions or if you wish to file a complaint
or exercise any rights listed in this Notice, please contact:
Steve M. Murray
Cabell County EMS
846 8TH Avenue
Huntington, WV 25701
(304) 526 – 9797
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