Privacy Statement
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Business Associates: There are some services provided in our organization through contacts with business associates. Examples include a record retention service for storage of your health record, computer vendors, outside auditors, transcription services, accountants and/or attorneys. When these services are contracted, we may disclose your heath information to our business associates so that they can perform the job we have asked them to do. To protect your health information, however, we require our business associates to appropriately safeguard such data.

Third Parties: We may disclose information to interpreters if they are needed for your health care in our office.

Notification: We may contact you by phone, including leaving a message on your answering machine, by letter, or by postcard to provide appointment reminders. 

Communication with Family: Health professionals, using their best judgment, may disclose to a family member, other relative, close personal friend or any other person you identify, health information relevant to that person's involvement in your care or payment related to your care.

Emergencies: We may use or disclose your protected health information in an emergency treatment situation. If this happens, your physician shall try to obtain your or your legal representative's consent as soon as reasonably possible after the delivery of treatment. If your physician or another physician in the practice is required by law to treat you and the physician has attempted to obtain your or your legal representative's consent but is unable to obtain that consent, he or she may still use or disclose your protected health information to treat you.

Funeral Directors: We may disclose health information to funeral directors consistent with applicable law required to carry out their duties.

Research: We may disclose information to researchers when their research has been approved by an Institutional Review Board (IRB) that has reviewed the research proposal and established protocols to ensure the privacy of your health information.

Marketing: We may contact you to provide reminders or information about treatment alternatives or other health related benefits and services that may be of interest to you (either by a phone, letter, postcard or any other common modality of information dissemination).

Food and Drug Administration (FDA): We may disclose to the FDA, health information relative to adverse events with respect to food, supplements, product and product defects or post marketing surveillance information to enable product recalls, repair or replacement.

Workers Compensation: We may disclose health information to the extent authorized by and necessary to comply with laws relating to workers compensation or other similar programs established by law.

Public Health: As required by law, we may disclose your health information to public health or legal authorities charged with preventing or controlling disease, injury or disability.

Law Enforcement: We may disclose health information for law enforcement purposes as required by law or in response to an invalid subpoena. If you are an inmate of a correctional institution or under the custody of a law enforcement official, we may release health information about you to the correctional institution or law enforcement official. We may disclose health information about you to federal officials for military, national security, intelligence and other instances required by law.

Federal law makes provisions for your health information to be released to an appropriate health oversight agency, public health authority or attorney, provided that a work force member or business associate believes in good faith that we have engaged in unlawful conduct or have otherwise violated professional or clinical standards and are potentially endangering one or more patients, workers or the public.