1. Uses and disclosures of PHI in healthcare with your consent

After you have read this Notice you will be asked to sign a separate Consent Form to allow us to use and share your PHI.  In almost all cases we intend to use your PHI here or share your PHI with other people or organizations to provide treatment to you, arrange for payment for our services, or some other internal agency functions called health care operations.  Together these routine purposes are called TPO and the Consent Form allows us to use and disclose your PHI for TPO. 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 condition to provide care to you.  In order to provide the counseling services you seek, you have to agree to let us collect the information and to use it and share it, as necessary, to care for you properly. You must sign the Consent Form before we begin to treat you because if you do not agree and consent we cannot treat you.

When you come to see us, several people from our agency may collect some information about you and it may go into your healthcare records here.  Generally, we use or disclose your PHI for three purposes: treatment, obtaining payment, and what are called healthcare operations. Let's see what these are about:

For treatment

We use your medical information to provide you with psychological treatment or services.  These might include individual, couple, child/adolescent, family, or group therapy,  treatment planning, or measuring the effects of our services.
We may share or disclose your relevant PHI with others, like psychiatrists or family doctors who may also provide treatment to you.  We may refer you to other professionals or consultants for services we cannot offer, such as special testing or medication evaluation.  When we do this we need to tell them some things about you and your conditions.  We will get their findings and opinions and those will go into your records here.  If you receive treatment in the future from other professionals we can also share your PHI with them upon request.  These constitute how we use and disclose your PHI for treatment. 

For payment
We may use your information to bill you, your insurance provider, or other third party payers for the treatment we provide to you.  We may contact your insurance company to check on exactly what your insurance covers.  We may have to tell them about your diagnoses, what treatments you have received, and what we expect as we treat you.  We will need to tell them when we meet, changes in your symptoms, your progress, and other similar things.  These constitute use of PHI for payment.

For health care operations

There are some other ways we may use or disclose your PHI which are called health care operations.  For example, we may use your PHI to see where we can make improvements in the care and services we provide.  We also have internal agency procedures which may use PHI for quality assurance and risk management purposes.  When you terminate treatment with your therapist your record must be archived for up to six years by law.  Access to those files is protected and limited to appropriate agency personnel.  These constitute use for operations.

1b.   Other uses in healthcare

Appointment Reminders.  We may use and disclose medical information to reschedule or remind you of appointments.  If you wish to specify the ways in which we contact you to further protect your privacy please make that clear to us.  We can usually make those arrangements because we, too, are concerned with your privacy.  Just tell us.
Treatment Alternatives.  We may use and disclose your PHI to tell you about or recommend
possible treatments or alternatives that may be of interest to you.
Other Benefits and Services.  We may use and disclose your PHI to tell you about health-
related benefits or services that may be of interest to you.
Staff Training and Research.  We may use or share your information to do research and improve treatments. For example, case studies may be presented in a training setting to expand the staff therapists' expertise in the area of a particular clinical concern.  In all cases your name, address and other information that reveals who you are will be removed to protect your anonymity.  If there is ever a need to share specific identifying information, we will discuss the project with you and you will have the option to sign a special Authorization Form before any information is shared.
Business Associates.  There are some jobs which we hire other businesses to do for us.  In the law,

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