We are required by law to maintain the privacy of PHI and to provide you with a notice of legal duties and privacy practices concerning PHI. We reserve the right to change the privacy policies and practices described in this notice. Unless we notify you of such changes, however, we are required to abide by the terms currently in effect. If we revise our policies and procedures, a notice of updated procedures will be sent to the address we have on file for you. The following information describes how psychological and medical information about you may be used and disclosed and how you can get access to this information. Please review it carefully. This information is part of our clinic’s compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
1) Uses and Disclosures for Treatment, Payment and Health Care Operations
Elevate Your Mind may use or disclose your protected health information (PHI) for treatment, payment and health care operations purposes only with your written authorization.
2) Other Uses and Disclosures Requiring Authorization
Elevate Your Mind may use or disclose PHI for other purposes when your appropriate authorization is obtained. For your own protection, we cannot accept verbal authorization for the release of information. If you would like to revoke any authorization starting on a specific date, the request needs to be submitted in writing.
3) Uses and Disclosures Without Authorization
Elevate Your Mind clinician may use or disclose PHI without your consent or authorization in the following circumstances:
- Child abuse – If your Elevate Your Mind clinician has reason to believe that a child has been subjected to abuse or neglect, they must, by law, report this suspicion to the appropriate authorities.
- Abuse of a dependent adult – Your Elevate Your Mind clinician may disclose protected health information if they reasonably believe that you are a victim or perpetrator of abuse, neglect, or exploitation of a dependent adult.
- Health oversight activities – If your Elevate Your Mind clinician receives a subpoena from any professional Board of Examiners investigating this practice, your clinician must disclose any PHI requested by the Board.
- Judicial and administrative proceedings – If you are involved in a court proceeding and a request is made for information about your diagnosis and treatment, such information is privileged under state law.
- Elevate Your Mind will NOT release information without your written authorization or a court order. However, the privacy privilege does NOT apply when you are being evaluated by a third party or where the evaluation is court- ordered. You will be informed of this in advance if this is the case.
- Your PHI might also be required to be disclosed in legal proceedings where 1) confidential information is necessary to the proper administration of justice, 2) a client’s mental status is at issue and 3) information on therapy sessions that took place in a family or couples’ session is needed.
- Serious threat to health or safety – If you communicate to your Elevate Your Mind clinician a specific threat of imminent harm against yourself or another individual, or if your clinician believes that there is clear, imminent risk of physical or mental injury being inflicted, your clinician may make disclosures necessary to protect you or that individual from harm.
4) Client’s Rights and Clinician’s Duties
- Right to request restrictions – You have the right to request restrictions on certain uses and disclosures of protected health information. However, we are not required to agree to a restriction you request.
- Right to receive confidential communications by alternative means and at alternative locations – You have the right to request and receive confidential communications of PHI by alternative means and at alternative locations. (For example, you may not want a family member to know that you are seeing one of our associates.) On your request, Elevate Your Mind will send your bills to another address.
- Right to inspect and copy – You have the right to inspect or obtain a copy (or both) of your PHI in our mental health and billing records used to make decisions about you for as long as the PHI is maintained in the record. We may deny you access to PHI under certain circumstances, but in some cases, you may have this decision reviewed. You have the right to inspect or obtain a copy (or both) of psychotherapy notes unless we believe the disclosure of the record will be injurious to your health. On your request, we will discuss with you the details of the request and denial process for both PHI and psychotherapy notes.
- Right to amend – You have the right to request an amendment of PHI for as long as the PHI is maintained in the record. We may deny your request. If you make such a request, we will discuss with you the details of the amendment process.
- Right to accounting – You generally have the right to receive an accounting of disclosures of PHI. On your request, your Elevate Your Mind clinician will discuss with you the details of the accounting process.
- Right to a paper copy – You have the right to obtain a paper copy of the notice from Elevate Your Mind, even if you have agreed to receive the notice electronically.
If you have any questions about our Privacy Policy and HIPAA Compliance, please contact our administrative support team at info@elevateyourmind.co.