Notice
of Privacy Practices
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.
Bluefield Rescue
Squad is required by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
(“HIPAA”) to maintain the privacy of your protected health information (“PHI”).
We are also required by law to provide you with the attached detailed Notice of
Privacy Practices (“Notice”) explaining our legal duties and privacy practices
with respect to your PHI.
Uses and
Disclosures for Treatment, Payment or Healthcare Operations
Bluefield Rescue
Squad may use or disclose your PHI without your authorization, for the
following purposes:
Treatment
We can use your PHI for 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). We may also share
your PHI with other individuals involved in your care. For example, we may
share PHI via radio or telephone to the hospital or dispatch center as well as
provide the hospital with a copy of the record we create in the course of
providing you with treatment and transport. We may also share your PHI with
other healthcare providers for their treatment activities.
Payment
We may use and
disclose your PHI for any activities we things as organizing your PHI,
submitting bills to insurance companies (either directly or through a third
party billing company), managing billed claims for services rendered,
performing medical necessity determinations and reviews, performing utilization
reviews, and collecting outstanding accounts. We may also disclose PHI to another
healthcare provider or entity for the payment activities of the provider or
entity that receives the PHI (such as your hospital).
Healthcare
Operations
We may use or
disclose your PHI for things such as 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, fundraising, and certain marketing activities. We may also disclose
your PHI to another healthcare provider (such as the hospital to which you are
transported) for the healthcare operations activities of the entity that
receives the information as long as the entity receiving the information has or
has had a relationship with you and the PHI pertains to that relationship.
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
nonemergency 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.
Other Uses and
Disclosure of Your PHI We Can Make Without Authorization
Bluefield Rescue
Squad is also permitted to use or disclose your PHI without your written
authorization the following situations:
- · For
healthcare 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;
- · 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, 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 other actions undertaken by the
government (or their contractors) by law to oversee the healthcare 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 to stop a crime;
- · 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 and as necessary to facilitate organ
donation and transplantation.
Uses and Disclosures of Your PHI
That Require Your Written Authorization
Any other use or
disclosure of PHI, other than those listed above, will only be made with your
written authorization. You make revoke this authorization at any time by
contacting us. Specifically, we must obtain your written authorization before
using or disclosing your: (a) Patient Care Report, other than for the purpose
of carrying out our own treatment, payment or health care operations purposes,
(b) PHI for marketing when we receive payment to make a marketing
communication; or (c) PHI when engaging in a sale of your PHI.
Your Rights
Regarding Your PHI
As a patient, you
have a number of rights with respect to your PHI, including:
Right to access, copy or inspect
your PHI
You have the
right to inspect and obtain a paper or electronic copy of most of the PHI that
we collect and maintain about you. You also have the right to request that we
transmit your PHI to a third party. Requests for access to your PHI or to
transmit your PHI to a third party should be made in writing to our HIPAA Compliance
Officer, and by filling out an access request form.
Right to request an amendment of
your PHI
You have the
right to ask us to amend PHI that we maintain about you. Requests for
amendments to your PHI should be made in writing and you should contact our HIPAA
Compliance Officer if you wish to make a request for amendment.
Right to request an accounting of
certain disclosures of your PHI
You may request an accounting of certain disclosures of your
PHI. Bluefield Rescue Squad will provide an accounting of those disclosures
that we are required to account for under HIPAA. If you wish to request an
accounting of disclosures of your PHI that are subject to the accounting
requirement, you should contact, our HIPAA Compliance Officer and make a
request in writing.
Right
to request restrictions on uses and disclosures of your PHI
You have the
right to request that we restrict how we use and disclose your PHI for
treatment, payment or healthcare operations purposes, or to restrict the
information that is provided to family, friends and other individuals involved
in your healthcare. However, we are only required to abide by a requested
restriction under limited circumstances, and it is generally our policy that we
will not agree to any restrictions unless required by law to do so. If you wish
to request a restriction on the use or disclosure of your PHI, you should
contact our HIPAA Compliance Officer and make a request in writing.
Right to notice of a breach of
unsecured PHI
If we discover
that there has been a breach of your unsecured PHI, we will notify you about
that breach
by first-class
mail dispatched to the most recent address that we have on file. If you prefer
to be notified about breaches by electronic mail, please contact our HIPAA
Compliance Officer, to make Bluefield Rescue Squad aware of this preference and
to provide a valid email address to send the electronic notice.
Right
to request confidential communications
You have the
right to request that we send your PHI to an alternate location (e.g., somewhere
other than your home address) or in a specific manner (e.g., by email
rather than regular mail). If you wish to request that we communicate PHI to a
specific location or in a specific format, you should contact our HIPAA
Compliance Officer and make a request in writing.
Internet,
Email and the Right to Obtain Copy of Paper Notice
We will
prominently post a copy of this Notice on our web site and make the Notice available
electronically through the web site. If you allow us, we will provide our
Notice of Privacy Practices to you electronically instead of on paper. You may
always request a paper copy of our Notice.
Revisions to the Notice
Bluefield Rescue
Squad is required to abide by the terms of the version of this Notice currently
in effect. However, Bluefield Rescue Squad 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 PHI that we maintain. Any material changes to the Notice
will be promptly posted in our facilities and on our web site, if we maintain
one. You can get a copy of the latest version of this Notice by contacting our
HIPAA Compliance 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 that 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. If you have any questions or if you wish to file
a complaint or exercise any rights listed in this Notice, please contact:
HIPAA Compliance
Officer
Bluefield Rescue
Squad
1900 Stadium
Drive
Bluefield,
WV 24701
304-327-7173
Effective Date of the Notice: 01/01/2021
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