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A. Introduction To Our Clients B. What we mean by your information C. Privacy and the laws about privacy D. How your protected health information can be used and shared 1. Uses and disclosures with your consent a. The basic uses and disclosures for treatment, payment and safety b. Other uses and disclosures in health care 2. Uses and disclosures requiring your Authorization 3. Uses and disclosures not requiring you Consent or Authorization 4. Uses and disclosures requiring you to have an opportunity to object 5. An accounting of disclosures we have made E. If you have questions or problems A. Introduction To Our Clients This notice will tell you about how we handle information about you. It tells how we use this information in our office, how we share it with other professionals and organizations, and how you can see it. We want you to know all of this so that you can make the best decisions for yourself and your family. We are also required to tell you about this because of the privacy regulations of a federal law, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). Because this law and the laws of Kansas are very complicated and we don’t want to make you read a lot that may not apply to you, we have simplified some parts. If you have any questions or want to know more about anything in this Notice, please ask our Privacy Officer for more explanation or more details. B. What We Mean By Your Information Each time we meet with you or a member of your family, we are collecting information about you and your well being. Much of this information is related to your physical, medical, educational, emotional, and mental health status from the past, present or future. Information collected can also be relating to payment for care and services provided treatment or other services you received from an affiliate agency or us. This information goes into your case file at the office. In the office this protected health information (PHI) is likely to include these kinds of information:
This list is just to give you an idea and there may be other kinds of information that goes into your clinical file. You will also find consents and authorizations that legal guardian and clients sign to allow professionals to share information in order to work with your family most effectively. Other reports and assessment tools are also completed to assure that those providers working with us have sufficient information and we are making all necessary referrals needed to work with you and your child. We want you to understand what is in your record and what it is used for so you can make better decisions about whom, when, and why others should have this information. Although the clinical record is the physical property of The Farm, Inc., the information belongs to you. You can inspect read, or review it. If you want a copy we can make one for you but may charge you for the costs of copying and mailing. There are limits of what information we can share with you and your request will be honored within a reasonable time frame based on the information you are requesting to review. If you find anything in your records that you think is incorrect or something important is missing you can ask us to amend this to your record although in some situations we don‘t have to agree to do that. Our Privacy Officer, whose name is at the end of this Notice, can explain more about this. C. Privacy and the Laws The HIPAA law requires us to keep your family’s information private and to give you this notice of our legal duties and our privacy practices, which is called the Notice of Privacy Practices (NPP). We will obey the rules of this notice as long as it is in effect but if we change it the rules of the new NPP will apply to all the information we keep. If we change the NPP we will post the new Notice in our office and our web site. D. How your Protected Health Information can be Used and Shared When others read your information in the agency that is called in the law ”use”. If the information is shared with or sent to persons outside this agency, that is called in the law, “disclosure”. Except in some special circumstances, when we use your protected information here or disclose it to others we share only the minimum necessary needed for the purpose. The law gives you rights to know about your information, how it is used and to have a say in how it is disclosed and so we will tell you more about what we do with your information. 1. Uses and Disclosures of Information with Your Consent You will be asked to sign a separate Consent form to allow us to use and share only the minimum necessary. In almost all cases we intend to use your information here or share your information with other people or organizations to provide treatment to you, arrange for payment for our services, or some other business functions call health care operations (providing needed safety information). Together these routine purposes are called TPO and the Consent form allows us to use and disclose your information TPO. Please re-read that last sentence until it is clear because it is very important. 1a. For Treatment, Payment or Health Care Operations: We need information about you and your family to provide care and treatment for your children and yourself. You have to agree to let us collect the information and to use it and share it as necessary to care for you and your children properly. Therefore, you must sign the Consent form before we begin to treat you because if you do not agree and consent we may not treat you. If your children are in state custody and the Court has determined that a department (SRS or JJA) of the state has legal custody of your children, the state department responsible for the care of your children can provide us with consent to treat your children. We prefer that you consent for us to provide care and treatment for your children. As we work with you and your family, the main person collecting information about you and your family will be your assigned worker(s). The information they collect will go into your clinical case file. Generally, we may use or disclose your information for three purposes: treatment, obtaining payment, and what are called healthcare operations. For Treatment. We use or disclose your information to provide you and your children with the services needed and identified in your case plan/treatment plan. These treatment services can include: mental health services, drug and alcohol services, housing or domestic services, placement services, vocational services, educational services and medical services. We may share or disclose your information on a minimum necessary basis to others that may provide treatment/services for you or your children. We are likely to share you and your children’s information with your personal physician, school, therapist, or foster care/residential provider. Again, this information will be on a minimum necessary basis for the professional to determine if they can provide needed treatment and services. Once the service/treatment provider has agreed to provide care and treatment the provider becomes part of the team and more information may be shared to and from team members to ensure all professionals are working collaboratively together in the best interest of you and your children. All information shared shall be reported in clinical file. For Payment. We may use or disclose your information to bill your private insurance, client medical card, you or State of Kansas (SRS or JJA) for services provided. We may contact the payee to check on exactly what your insurance covers. We may have to tell the payee about you or your child’s diagnoses, what treatments have been received, and what we expect as we continue treatment. We will need to tell them about when we met, your progress, and other similar things. For Health Care Operations. There are some other ways we may use or disclose your information. We may use or disclose your information to see where we can make improvements in the care and services that we provide. Examples of how we do this are through data entry, data collection and case file audits. We may be required to supply some information to government agencies so they can study service and treatment. 1b. Other Uses in Healthcare Phone Calls and Written Correspondence. We may use and disclose information to reschedule, remind you of appointments, notify you of incidents, request surveys for treatment or other care. If you don’t want us to call or write to you at a certain location, you must let us know. We can generally try to arrange for that. Treatment Alternatives. We may use and disclose your information to tell you about or recommend possible treatment or alternatives that may be of interest to you. Other Benefits and Services. We may use and disclose your information to tell you about health-related benefits or services that may be of interest to you. Research. We may use or share your information to do research to improve treatments. In all cases your name, address and other information that reveals who you are will be removed from the information given to researchers. If they need to know who you are we will discuss the research project with you and you will have to sign a special Authorization form before any information is shared. Audits. Internal and external agency case file audits may randomly occur. These audits are generally only to ensure workers are following agency protocol. The auditor will have access briefly to all of your information and is bound by confidentiality not to reveal any information they read to any other person. Business Associates. There are some jobs we hire other businesses to do for us. They are called our Business Associates in the law. Examples include agency that complete financial audits, transport drivers or lawyers. These business associates may need to receive some of your information to do their jobs properly. To protect your privacy they have agreed in their contract with us to safeguard your information. 2. Uses and Disclosures Requiring Your Authorization If we want to use your information for any purpose besides treatment, payment, and other benefits/services, or those we described above we need your permission on an Authorization form. We don’t expect to need this very often. If you do authorize us to use or disclose your information, you can revoke (cancel) that permission, in writing, at any time. After that time we will not use or disclose your information for the purposes that we agreed to. Of course, we cannot take back any information we had already disclosed with your permission or that we had used in our office. 3. Uses and Disclosures of Information from Clinical Files not Requiring Consent or Authorization The laws let us use and disclose some of your information without your consent or authorization in some cases. When required by law. There are some federal, state, or local laws, which require us to disclose information.
For Law Enforcement Purposes. We may release information if asked to do so by law enforcement officials to investigate a crime or criminal. For public health activities. We might disclose some of your information to agencies, which investigate disease or injuries. For specific government functions. We may disclose information of military personnel and veterans to government benefit programs relating to eligibility and enrollment, to Workers’ Compensation programs, to correctional facilities if you are an inmate, and for national security reasons. To Prevent a Serious Threat to Health or Safety. If we come to believe that there is a serious threat to you or your child’s health or safety or that of another person or the public we can disclose some of your information. We will do this to persons who can prevent the danger. 4. Uses and Disclosures Requiring You to have an Opportunity to Object We can share some information about you with your family or close others. We will only share information with those involved in your care and anyone else you choose such as close fiends or clergy (i.e. locating kinship placement). We will ask you about whom you want us to tell what information about your situation or treatment. You can tell us what you want and we will honor your wishes as long as it is not against the law. If it is an emergency -so we cannot ask if you disagree- we can share information if we believe that it is what you would have wanted and if we believe it will help you if we do share it. If we do share information, in an emergency, we will tell you as soon as we can. If you don’t approve we will stop, as long as it is not against the law. 5. An Accounting of Disclosures When we disclose your information we keep some records of which we sent it to, when we sent it, and what we sent. You can get an accounting of many of these disclosures. E. If you have Questions or Problems If you need more information or have questions about the privacy practices described above, please speak to Privacy Officer Kathryn Efinger, L.M.S.W. If you have a problem with how your information has been handled or if you believe your privacy rights have been violated, contact the Privacy Officer. You have the right to file a compliant with us and with the Secretary of the Federal Department of Health and Human Services. We promise that we will not in any way limit your care or take any actions against you if you complain. |
