Papago Buttes Privacy Policies

It is the policy of our practice that all physicians and staff preserve the integrity and confidentiality of protected health information (PHI) pertaining to our patients. The purpose of this policy is to ensure that our practice and its physicians and staff have the necessary medical and PHI to provide the highest quality medical care possible while protecting the confidentiality of the PHI of our patients to the highest degree possible. Patients should not fear providing information to our practice and its physicians and staff for purposes of treatment payment and healthcare operations (TPO). To that end, our practice and its physicians and staff will:

• Adhere to the standards set forth in the Notice of Privacy Practices
• Collect, use and disclose PHI only in conformance with state and federal laws and current patient covenants and/or authorizations, as appropriate. Our practice and its physicians and staff will not use or disclose PHI for uses outside of the practice’s TPO, such as marketing employment, life insurance applications, etc. without an authorization from the patient.
• Use and disclose PHI to remind patients of their appointments only with their consent.
• Recognize that PHI collected about patients must be accurate, timely, complete and available when needed. Our practice and its physicians and staff will implement reasonable measures to protect the integrity of all PHI maintained.
• Act as responsible information stewards and treat all PHI as sensitive and confidential. Consequently, our practice and its physicians and staff will:
  • Treat all PHI data as confidential in accordance with professional ethics, accreditation standards, and legal requirements.
  • Not disclose PHI data unless the patient (or his or her representative) has properly consented to the disclosure or there is an authorization by law to do so.
  • Recognize that our practice “owns” the medical records. The patient has a right to inspect and obtain a copy of his/her PHI. Our practice and its physicians and staff will permit patients access to their medical records when their written requests are approved by our practice.
• All physicians and staff of our practice will maintain all original consent forms with the date documented when records were sent as instructed by the patient. When requesting PHI be sent to our practice, all physicians and staff will keep a copy of the consent with the date the original was mailed documented until receipt of PHI.
• All physicians and staff of our practice will adhere to any restrictions concerning the use or disclosure of PHI that patients have requested and have been approved by our practice.
• All physicians and staff of our practice must adhere to this policy. Our practice will not tolerate violations of this policy. Violation of the policy is grounds for disciplinary action, up to and including termination of employment and criminal or professional sanctions in accordance with our practice’s personnel rules and regulations.
• All physicians and staff of our practice must destroy any documents with patient’s information on it other than medical records. Destruction will be done in our practice by shredding the documents such as billing information used to balance internal records, telephone messages recorded then discarded, unnecessary schedules and call sheets, etc. This does not include PHI only interoffice documentation.
• Our practice may change this privacy policy in the future. Any changes will be effective upon the release of a revised privacy policy and will be made available to patients upon request.