Allegiance Home Health Care | HIPAA Privacy Policy

Joint Commission
on accreditation of healthcare organizations

This notice describes how medical information about your care may be used and disclosed and how you can get access to this information. Please Review It Carefully.

Disclaimer
The contents of the Allegiance Home Health Care website (www.allegiancecare.com), are provided solely for informational purposes. Nothing contained therein is intended to provide medical advice or diagnosis of an individual patient and/or condition. Such information should be obtained by consulting with a physician.

Your Medical Records
Whenever you are treated by a health care professional, a record of your visit is made. In addition to your personal information, this record will usually contain information pertaining to symptoms, examinations performed, test results, treatments, prescriptions, and a plan for ongoing or future treatment. This medical record is used by health care professionals that contribute to your care.

Your Rights
Although the information contained within your medical record belongs to you, unless otherwise prescribed by law, the records themselves are the physical property of the healthcare facility or healthcare professional that created it. You have the right to:

View and request in writing a copy of your medical record.
Request in writing, clinical or demographic changes to your medical record.
Request disclosures of the information in your medical record by other means or at alternate locations.
Obtain an accounting of disclosures of your information.
Request restrictions on uses and disclosures of your health information. Allegiance Home Health Care is not required to comply with your requested restriction(s).
Revoke your authorization to use or disclose your information except to the extent that it has already been used.

Our Responsibilities
Allegiance Home Health Care is required by law to maintain the privacy of your health information. We will also:

Provide you with a notice as to our legal responsibilities and privacy standards with regarding information we compile about you and will abide by the terms of the notice.
Accommodate reasonable requests you may have to communicate health information by other means or at alternate locations.
Post any new notices on our website. We reserve the right to change our practices and to make any such changes effective for all health information we maintain.
Should our information practices change, we will mail a revised notice to the address we have on file for you.

For more information or to report a problem
If you have questions and would like additional information, you may contact us at (586) 979.8770. If you believe your privacy rights have been violated, you can file a complaint with the Department of Health and Human Services.

Region 5 - IL, IN, MI, MN, OH, WI

Office for Civil Rights
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
233 N. Michigan Ave. - Suite 240
Chicago, IL 60601
(312) 886-2359; (312) 353-5693 (TDD)
(312) 886-1807 FAX

Website: http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/

We will take no retaliatory action against you if you make such complaints.

We will use your health information for treatment
Information obtained by the assessment professional will be recorded in your record and used to determine the course of treatment that should work best for you. For example, members of your healthcare team will then record the actions they took, their observations and education provided. We will also provide other practitioners involved with your care with copies of various reports that should assist them in treating you as well as enabling your physician to provide orders for your home care.

We will use your heath information for payment
Your information will be utilized to obtain payment for services provided. A bill may be sent to you or a third party payer. The information on or accompanying the bill may include information that identifies you, as well as your diagnosis, services provided and supplies used. Outside collection agencies may also be utilized.

We will use your health information for regular healthcare operations
We may use and disclose health information in order to facilitate operations and as necessary to provide quality care to all patients. Examples include:

Quality assessment and improvement activities.
Activities designed to improve health or reduce health care costs.
Protocol development, case management and care coordination.
Employee performance and evaluation.
Training programs including those in which students, trainees or practitioners in health care learn under supervision.
Accreditation, certification, licensing or credentialing activities.
Review and auditing, including compliance reviews, medical reviews, legal services and compliance programs.
Business planning and development.
Patient satisfaction surveys.
In coordination of emergency and disaster planning and implementation.

For treatment alternatives
We may use and disclose your heath information to tell you about or recommend possible treatment options or alternatives that may interest you.

Business Associates
There may be some services provided in our organization through contracts with Business Associates. Examples may include: therapy services, laboratory tests, supply distribution, and audit services. When these services are contracted, we may disclose some or all of your health information to our Business Associate so that they can perform the job we’ve asked them to do. To protect your health information, however we require the Business Associate to appropriately safeguard your information.

Communication with family
Health professionals, using their best judgment, may disclose to a family member, other relative, close personal friends or any other person you identify, health information relevant to that person’s involvement your care or payment related to your care.

Research
We may disclose information to researchers when a review board that has reviewed the research proposal, and established protocols to ensure the privacy of your health information has approved their research.

Marketing
We may contact you to provide information about your treatment alternatives or other health related benefits and services that may be of interest to you.

Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
As required by law we may disclose to the FDA health information relative to adverse events with respect to food, supplements, products and product defects or post marketing surveillance information to enable product recalls, repairs or replacement.

Workers compensation
We may disclose health information to the extent authorized by and to the extent necessary to comply with laws relating to workers compensation or other similar established by law.

Public health
As required by law, we may disclose your health information to public health or legal authorities charged with tracking birth and deaths, as well as preventing or controlling disease, injury or disability.

Law Enforcement
We may disclose health information for law enforcement purposes as required by law or in response to a valid subpoena. Federal law makes provision for your health information to be released to an appropriate health oversight agency, public health authority or attorney, provided that a work force member or business associate believes in good faith that we have engaged in unlawful conduct or have otherwise violated professional or clinical standards and are potentially endangering one or more patients, workers or the public.

Availability of this Notice
This notice will be prominently posted in the office. Patients will be provided a hard copy and the notice will be maintained on our website at:
http://www.allegiancecare.com/allegiance/hipaaprivacy.asp

Authorization to use or disclose health information
Allegiance Home Health Care will not disclose your health information without your written authorization for any purpose other than those described in this notice. If you or someone with the legal authority to represent you authorizes Allegiance Home Health Care to use or disclose your health information, you may revoke such authorization in writing at any time.