"healthcare provider," information is collected about you and your physical and mental health.  It may be information about your past, present or future health or conditions, the treatment or other services you get from us or from others, or about payment for healthcare services. The information we collect from you is called, in the law PHI, which stands for Protected Health Information.  This information goes into your record on file at our office.  In this agency, PHI is likely to include various kinds of information:

· Your history: As a child, in school and at work, plus marital and personal history.
· Reasons you came for treatment: your problems, complaints, symptoms, needs, goals.
· Diagnoses. (the medical terms for your problems or symptoms).
· A treatment plan.  This is a plan for counseling and other services which we think will best help you.
· Progress notes.  Each time you come in we write down some things about how you are doing, what we observe about you, and what you tell us that is relevant to your treatment.
· Records we request, with your knowledge, from others who have treated you or evaluated you in the past.
· Reports from others providing supplemental treatment to you at the time of our work with you, such as      psychiatrists.
· Psychological test scores, school records, etc.
· Information about medications you took or are taking.
· Legal matters.
· Billing and insurance information.

This list is not comprehensive; there may be other kinds of information that go into your healthcare record here.
We use this information for many purposes.  For example, we may use it:

· To plan your care and treatment.
· To decide how well our treatments are working for you.
· When we talk with other healthcare professionals who are also treating you, such as your family doctor or a psychiatrist.
· To show that you actually have received the services from us which we billed to you or to your health insurance company.
· To improve the way we do our job by measuring the results of our work.

When you understand what is in your record and what it is used for, you can make better decisions about who, when, and why others should have this information.
Although your health record is the physical property of the healthcare practitioner or facility that collected it, the information belongs to you.  You can inspect, read, or review it.  If you want a copy we can make one for you with a charge for the costs of copying (and mailing if you want it mailed to you).  In some very unusual situations you cannot see all of what is in your records.  If you find anything in your records that you think is incorrect, or something important is missing, you can ask us to amend (add information to) your record, although in some rare 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 PHI private and to give you this notice of our legal duties and our privacy practices, which is called the Notice of Privacy Practice or 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 PHI we keep.  If we change the NPP we will post the new Notice in our office where everyone can see.  You or anyone else can get a copy from our Privacy Officer at any time and it will be posted on our website at www.counoff @ pcsm.org.

D. How your protected health information can be used and shared
When your information is read by your therapist, or any other specially designated PCSM employee for a specific purpose, that is called, in the law, "use."  If the information is shared with or sent to others outside this office, that is called, in the law, "disclosure."  When we use your PHI here or disclose it to others, we share only the minimum necessary PHI needed for the purpose.  The law gives you rights to know about your PHI, how it is used and to have a say in how it is disclosed.  We will tell you more about what we do with your information.

We use and disclose PHI for several reasons.  Mainly, we will use and disclose (share) it for
routine purposes and we will explain more about these below.  For other uses we must tell you
about them and have written authorization from you, unless the law lets or requires us to make
the use or disclosure without your authorization.  However, the law also says that we are allowed to make some uses and disclosures without your consent or authorization.

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