Treatment: We will use and disclose your protected health information to provide, coordinate, or manage your health care and any related services. This includes disclosures to other third parties that are involved in your health care elsewhere. Specifically, we would disclose your protected health information to other physicians who may be treating you when we have the necessary permission from you to do so. For example, your protected health information may be provided to a physician to whom you have been referred to ensure that the physician has the necessary information to diagnose or treat you. In addition, we may occasionally disclose your protected health information to another physician or health care provider, such as a medical specialist or laboratory, who becomes involved in your care by providing assistance with your health care diagnosis or treatment.

Payment: Your protected health information will be used, as needed, to obtain payment for your health care services. This may include certain activities that your health insurance plan may undertake before it approves or pays for the health care services we recommend for you such as: making a determination of eligibility or coverage for benefits, reviewing services provided to you for medical necessity, and undertaking utilization review activities. For example, obtaining approval for coverage of future treatment with some medical modalities may require that your relevant medical information be disclosed to the health plan to obtain approval for future scheduling. Similarly, insurance companies may require that copies of your applicable medical records accompany any requests for payment of services already provided to you.

Healthcare Operations: We may use or disclose, as necessary, your protected health information in order to support various business activities of our clinic. These activities include, but are not limited to, quality assessment activities, employee reviews, licensing, marketing and fundraising activities, and conducting or arranging for similar business activities.
For example, we may call you by name in the waiting room when ready to see you, and we may use or disclose your protected health information, as necessary, to contact you and remind you of your upcoming appointment(s).

We will share your protected health information with third party business associates that perform various activities—such as billing, collections, or records management—for the clinic. Whenever an arrangement between our office and a business associate involves the use or disclosure of your protected health information, we will have a written contract that contains terms that will protect the privacy of your information.

We may use or disclose your protected health information, as necessary, to provide you with information about treatment alternatives or other health-related benefits and services that may be of interest to you. We may also use and disclose your protected health information for other marketing activities. For example, your name and address may be used to send you a newsletter about our clinic and the services we offer. We may also send you information about products or services that we believe may be beneficial to you. We may use or disclose your demographic information and the dates that you received treatment from your physician, as necessary, in order to contact you for fundraising activities. If you do not wish to be contacted for these purposes, please call or write to our office at the address or phone number specified on page one.