Patient Privacy

This Notice Describes How Medical Information About You May Be Used And How You Can Get Access To This Information.
Please Review It Carefully.

Introduction

The Practice of Dr. John Miller understands that your medical information is private and confidential. We are required by law to maintain the privacy of “protected health information.” This includes any individually identifiable information that we obtain from you or others that relates to your past, present or future physical or mental health, the health care you have received, or payment for your health care.

As required by law, this notice provides you with information about your rights and our legal duties and privacy practices with respect to the privacy of protected health information. This notice also discusses the use and disclosures we will make of your protected health information. We must comply with the provisions of this notice as currently in effect, although we reserve the right to change the terms of this notice from time to time and to make the revised notice effective for all protected health information we maintain. You can always request a copy of our must current privacy notice.

Permitted Uses And Disclosures

We can use or disclose your protected health information for purposes of treatment, payment and health care operations. For each of these categories of use and disclosures, we have provided a description.

Treatment

Means the provision, coordination or management of your health care, including consultation between healthcare providers egarding your care and referrals for health care from one healthcare provider to another. For example, a doctor treating you for a broken leg may need to know if you have diabetes because this may slow the healing process. The doctor may need to contact a physical therapist to create the exercise regimen appropriate to your care.

Payment

Means the activities we undertake to obtain reimbursement for the health care provided to you, including billing, collections and claims management, determinations of eligibility and coverage and utilization review activities. For example, prior to providing health care services, we may need to provide information to your third party payer about your medical condition to determine whether the proposed course of treatment will be covered. When we bill the third party payer for the services rendered to you, we can provide them with information regarding your care if necessary to obtain payment. Federal or state law may require us to obtain a written release from you prior to disclosing certain specially protected health information for payment purposes, and we will ask you to sing a release when necessary under applicable law.

Health Care Operations

Means the support functions of our practice related to treatment and payment, such as quality assurance activities, case management, receiving and complaints, physician reviews, compliance programs, audits, business planning, development, management and administrative activities. For example, we may use your protected health information to evaluate the performance of our staff when caring for you. We may also combine health information about many patients to decide what additional services we should offer, what services are needed and whether certain new treatments are affective. In addition, we may remove information that identifies you so that others can use the de-identified information to study health care and healthcare delivery without learning who you are.