Notice of HIPAA Privacy Practices

The Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 is a federal program that requires all medical records and other individually identifiable health information used or disclosed by us in any form, whether electronically, on paper, or orally, is kept confidential.  This Act gives you rights to understand and control how your health information is used.  HIPAA  provides penalties for covered entities that misuse personal health information.

We have prepared this “Summary Notice of HIPAA Privacy Practices” to explain how we are required to maintain the privacy of your health information. 

We may use and disclose your medical records for each of the following purposes:  treatment, payment, and health care operations:

Treatment means providing, coordinating, or managing health care and related services by one or more health care providers.  Payment means such activities as obtaining reimbursement for services, billing or collection activities, and utilization review.  Health care operations include the business aspects of running our laboratory service practice, such as conducting quality assessment and improvement activities, auditing functions, cost-management analysis and customer service.

We may contact you to provide laboratory draw site information or other health-related services that may be of interest to you.

Any other uses and disclosures will be made only with your written consent.  You may revoke such consent in writing and we are required to honor and abide by that written request, except to the extent that we have already taken actions relying on your consent.

You have the following rights with respect to your protected health information:

1.       You have the right to ask for restrictions on the ways we use and disclose your health information for treatment, payment, and health care operations.  You may also request that we limit our disclosures to persons assisting with your care.  We will consider your request, but are not required to accept it.

2.       You have the right to request that you receive communications containing your protected health information from us by alternative means or at alternative locations.

3.         Except under certain circumstances, you have the right to inspect and copy medical, billing, and other records used to make decisions about you.  If you ask for copies of this information, you will be charged a fee for copying and mailing.

4.         If you believe that information in your records is incorrect or incomplete, you have the right to ask us to correct the existing information or add missing information.  Under certain circumstances, we may deny your request, such as when the information is accurate and complete.

5.       You have a right to receive a list of certain instances that we have disclosed or used your medical information.