Hippa
Your Health Information is Secure with Us
At Patient Focus Physicians Associates Inc., we remain constantly committed to the privacy and security of your protected health information (PHI) as required by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
Our administration ensures all federal and state privacy laws regarding the use and disclosure of your PHI are strictly followed and documented for 3rd party audits.
What is Protected Health Information (PHI)?
PHI refers to any individually identifiable health information transmitted or maintained by us, regardless of form (oral, written, or electronic). This includes medical records, test results, billing statements, and other health-related data.
How We Protect Your PHI
We safeguard your PHI through the following Best Practices:
- Encryption: We encrypt all of your PHI maintained electronically. This scrambles the information to make it unreadable by unauthorized users.
- Secure storage: We store all physical PHI records in locked facilities and cabinets accessible only to authorized personnel.
- Limited access: We grant access to PHI only to those workforce members who need the information to provide and manage your treatment or health care operations.
- Staff training: All of our physicians, clinicians, and administrative staff receive regular training on HIPAA privacy policies and procedures.
- Monitoring: We monitor our privacy safeguards regularly to ensure compliance and promptly report any suspected breaches of unsecured PHI.
Using and Disclosing Your PHI
As permitted by HIPAA, we may use and disclose your PHI for the following purposes:
- Treatment: We share PHI with other healthcare providers involved in your treatment.
- Payment: We use and disclose PHI to bill and collect payment from your health insurance providers.
- Healthcare Operations: We may use PHI internally for audits, administrative services, training, and quality assurance.
- Your authorization: We obtain your written permission before using PHI for any purpose other than treatment, payment, or healthcare operations. You may revoke this permission at any time.
- Emergencies: In a medical emergency, we may release PHI to the extent necessary to provide you with emergency treatment.
- Public good: We may disclose PHI for public health activities such as disease monitoring or reporting adverse drug reactions. We may also disclose PHI to report abuse, neglect, or domestic violence.
- Law enforcement: We may release PHI in response to a court order, subpoena, or warrant. We may also use or disclose limited PHI to assist law enforcement in identifying or locating a suspect, fugitive or missing person.
- Decedents: We may release PHI to a coroner or medical examiner to identify a deceased individual or determine the cause of death.
You have the following rights regarding your PHI:
- Access: You may request to review and obtain copies of your PHI records.
- Amendment: You may ask us to correct any inaccurate or incomplete information in your records.
- Disclosure Accounting: You may request a list of instances where we have disclosed your PHI for reasons other than treatment, payment, and operations.
- Restrictions: You may ask us not to use or disclose any part of your PHI. We will comply with any reasonable requests.
- Questions: You may contact our HIPAA Compliance Officer with any questions about our privacy policies or the protections applied to your PHI.
We reserve the right to amend our HIPAA policies at any time. Revisions to our policies are effective immediately upon posting on our website. Please review the current privacy policy on our website for the most up-to-date version.