Privacy Policy

THIS NOTICE DESCRIBES HOW YOUR HEALTH INFORMATION MAY BE USED AND DISCLOSED AND HOW YOU CAN GET ACCESS TO THIS INFORMATION. PLEASE REVIEW IT CAREFULLY. YOU MAY HAVE ADDITIONAL RIGHTS UNDER STATE AND LOCAL LAW. PLEASE SEEK LEGAL COUNSEL FROM AN ATTORNEY LICENSED IN YOUR STATE IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS REGARDING YOUR RIGHTS TO HEALTH CARE INFORMATION.EFFECTIVE DATE OF THIS

NOTICE: This notice went into effect on June 1, 2021.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF RECEIPT OF PRIVACY NOTICE: Under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (hereafter, “HIPAA”), you have certain rights regarding the use and disclosure of your protected health information (hereafter, “PHI”).I. OUR PLEDGE REGARDING HEALTH INFORMATION:Connection Through Introspection LLC understands that health information about you and your health care is personal. We are committed to protecting health information about you. We create a record of the care and services you receive from me. We need this record to provide you with quality care and to comply with certain legal requirements. This notice applies to all of the records of your care generated by this mental health care practice. This notice will tell you about the ways in which we may use and disclose health information about you. We also describe your rights to the health information we keep about you, and describe certain obligations we have regarding the use and disclosure of your health information.We are required by law to:· Make sure that PHI that identifies you is kept private.· Give you this notice of our legal duties and privacy practices with respect to health information.· Follow the terms of the notice that is currently in effect.· We can change the terms of this Notice, and such changes will apply to all the information we have about you. The new Notice will be available upon request, in our office, and on our website.II. HOW WE MAY USE AND DISCLOSE HEALTH INFORMATION ABOUT YOU:The following categories describe different ways that we use and disclose health information. For each category of uses or disclosures, we will explain what we mean and try to give some examples. Not every use or disclosure in a category will be listed. However, all of the ways we are permitted to use and disclose information will fall within one of the categories.For Treatment Payment, or Health Care Operations: Federal privacy rules (regulations) allow health care providers who have a direct treatment relationship with the patient/client to use or disclose the patient/client’s personal health information without the patient’s written authorization, to carry out the health care provider’s own treatment, payment or health care operations. We may also disclose your PHI for the treatment activities of any health care provider. This too can be done without your written authorization. For example, if a clinician were to consult with another licensed health care provider about your condition, we would be permitted to use and disclose your PHI, which is otherwise confidential, in order to assist the clinician in diagnosis and treatment of your health condition. We may also use your PHI for operations purposes, including sending you appointment reminders, billing invoices, and other documentation.Disclosures for treatment purposes are not limited to the minimum necessary standard. Because therapists and other health care providers need access to the full record and/or full and complete information in order to provide quality care. The word “treatment” includes, among other things, the coordination and management of health care providers with a third party, consultations between health care providers, and referrals of a patient for health care from one health care provider to another.Lawsuits and Disputes: If you are involved in a lawsuit, we may disclose health information in response to a court or administrative order. We may also disclose health information about you or your minor child(ren) in response to a subpoena, discovery request, or other lawful process by someone else involved in the dispute, but only if efforts have been made to tell you about the request or to obtain an order protecting the information requested.III. CERTAIN USES AND DISCLOSURES REQUIRE YOUR AUTHORIZATION:1. Psychotherapy Notes. We do keep “psychotherapy notes” as that term is defined in 45 CFR § 164.501, and any use or disclosure of such notes requires your Authorization unless the use or disclosure is:1. For our use in treating you.2. For our use in training or supervising mental health practitioners to help them improve their skills in group, joint, family, or individual counseling or therapy.3. For our use in defending myself in legal proceedings instituted by you.4. For use by the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to investigate our compliance with HIPAA.5. Required by law and the use or disclosure is limited to the requirements of such law.6. Required by law for certain health oversight activities pertaining to the originator of the psychotherapy notes.7. Required by a coroner who is performing duties authorized by law.8. Required to help avert a serious threat to the health and safety of others.2. Marketing Purposes. We will not use or disclose your PHI for marketing purposes without your prior written consent. For example, if we request a review from you and plan to share the review publicly online or elsewhere to advertise our services or our practice, we will provide you with a release form and HIPAA authorization. The HIPAA authorization is required in the instance that your review contains PHI (i.e., your name, the date of the service you received, the kind of treatment you are seeking or other personal health details). Because you may not realize which information you provide is considered “PHI,” we will send you a HIPAA authorization and request your signature regardless of the content of your review. Once you complete the HIPAA authorization, we will have the legal right to use your review for advertising and marketing purposes, even if it contains PHI. You may withdraw this consent at any time by submitting a written request to us via the email address we keep on file or via certified mail to our address. Once we have received your written withdrawal of consent, we will remove your review from our website and from any other places where we have posted it. We cannot guarantee that others who may have copied your review from our website or from other locations will also remove the review. This is a risk that we want you to be aware of, should you give us permission to post your review.3. Sale of PHI. As site.