Notice of Privacy Practices Regarding Personal Health Information

This Notice describes how health information about you may be used and disclosed and how you can get access to this information. Please review it carefully.
If you have any questions about this notice, please contact the Privacy Officer, Lori Redfern, at privacy@sanctuarycenters.org

Our Pledge to Protect Your Privacy

We understand that information about you and your health is personal and we are committed to protecting your health information. We create a record of the care and services you receive at Sanctuary Centers. We use this record to provide you with quality care and to comply with certain legal requirements. This notice applies to all of the records of your care generated by Sanctuary Centers. This notice will tell you about the ways in which we may use and disclose health information about you. We also describe your rights and certain obligations we have regarding the use and disclosure of health information.

Sanctuary Centers is required by law to:

Make sure that health information that identifies you is kept private (with certain exceptions)
Give you this notice of our legal duties and privacy practices with respect to health information about you
Follow the terms of the notice that is currently in effect

Sanctuary Centers may use or disclose your health information without requiring your consent in the following circumstances:

In order to pay for your covered health expenses
In order to perform our agency activities, such as quality assessment or data management
To comply with the laws regarding reporting public health concerns to public health agencies and reporting possible
abuse to agencies protecting victims of abuse or neglect
To obtain required oversight from government agencies as required by law
To comply with a police warrant or police inquiry about the victim of a crime
To prevent a serious threat to your health and safety or that of another person
To comply with state law regarding workers’ compensation programs

Other Uses or Disclosures of your Protected Health Information

Will only be made with your written consent. This written consent can be revoked by you at any time, except to the extent that we have already taken action on the information disclosed.

Your rights regarding your Protected Health Information

Following a written request you have the following rights:

Right to access to your protected health information.
Right to amend your protected health information. We may deny your request in a written response (if, for example, you ask us to change information that we did not create or if we believe the record is accurate and complete) and you have the right to submit a written statement of disagreement with our decision.
Right to an accounting of disclosures we have made about your protected health information, except for those related to payment or our health care operations.
Right to request restrictions on the use and disclosure of your protected health information. We have the right to refuse this request.
Right to receive communication from us in a confidential manner, if to do so otherwise would endanger you.

Your Rights Concerning this Notice

You have the right to receive a paper copy of this notice at any time.

Health Information Security

All Sanctuary Centers employees are required to follow Sanctuary Centers’ security policies and procedures concerning the confidentiality of health information. In addition, Sanctuary Centers maintains physical, administrative, and technical security measures to safeguard your protected health information.

Changes to this Notice

We reserve the right to change the terms of this notice at any time. We will provide you with a copy of the new notice whenever we make material changes to the privacy practices described in this notice. We also post a copy of the current notice on the bulletin board in our reception area and on our website at www.sanctuarycenters.org.

Complaints

If you believe your privacy rights have been violated, you may file a complaint with our privacy officer, Lori Redfern (privacy@sanctuarycenters.org), or with the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.