Notice of Privacy Practices

THIS NOTICE DESCRIBES HOW INFORMATION ABOUT YOU MAY BE USED AND DISCLOSED AND HOW YOU CAN GET ACCESS TO THIS INFORMATION. PLEASE REVIEW IT CAREFULLY.

PURPOSE OF THIS NOTICE:

Lake Charlevoix EMS Authority is required by law to maintain the privacy of certain confidential health care information, known as Protected Health Information or PHI, and to provide you with notice of our legal duties and privacy practices with respect to your PHI. This notice describes your legal rights, advises you of our privacy practices, and lets you know how Emmet County EMS is permitted to use and disclose PHI about you.

Lake Charlevoix EMS Authority is also required to abide by the terms of the version of this notice currently in effect. In most situations, we may use this information as described in this notice without your permission, but there are some situations where we may use it only after we obtain your written authorization, if we are required by law to do so.

Uses and Disclosures of PHIP:  Lake Charlevoix EMS Authority may use PHI for the purposes of treatment, payment, and health care operations, in most cases without your written permission. Examples of our use of your PHI include:

For Treatment. This includes such things as verbal and written information that we obtain about you and use pertaining to your medical condition and treatment provided to you by us and other medical personnel (including doctors and nurses who give order to allow us to provide treatment to you). It also includes information we give to other health care personnel to whom we transfer your care and treatment, and includes transfer of PHI via radio or telephone to the hospital or dispatch center as well as providing the hospital with a copy of the written record we create in the course of providing you with treatment and transport.

The right to request an accounting or our use and disclosure of your PHI. You may request an accounting from us of certain disclosures of your medical information that we have made in the last six years prior to the date of your request. We are not required to give you an accounting of information we have used or disclosed for purposes of treatments, payment or health care operations, or when we share your health information with our business associates, like a billing company or a medical facility from/to which we have transported you.

We are also not required to give you an accounting of our Protected Health Information for which you have already given us written authorization. If you wish to request an accounting of the medical information about you that we have used or disclosed that is not exempted from accounting requirement, you should contact the privacy officer listed at the end of this notice.

The Right to request that we restrict the uses and disclosures of your PHI. You have the right to request that we restrict how we use and disclose your medical information that we have about you for treatment, payment or health care operations, or to restrict the information that is provide to family, friends and other individuals involved in your health care. But if you request a restriction and the information you asked us to restrict is needed to provide you with emergency treatment, then we may use the PHI or disclose the PHI to a health care provider to provide you with emergency treatment.  Lake Charlevoix EMS Authority is not required to agree to any restrictions you request, but any restrictions agreed to by Lake Charlevoix EMS Authority are binding on Lake Charlevoix EMS Authority.

Internet, Electronic Mail, and the Right to Obtain Copy of Paper Notice on Request. If we maintain a website, we will prominently post a copy of this notice on our website and make the notice available electronically through the website.  You may request this notice by electronic mail instead of paper.

Any other use, disclosure of PHI, other than those listed previously, will only be made with your written authorization, (the authorization must specifically identify the information we seek to use or disclose, as well as when and how we seek to use or disclose it).

You may revoke your authorization at any time, in writing, except to the extent that we have already used or disclosed medical information reliance on that authorization.

Patient Rights: As a patient, you have a number of rights with respect to the protection of your PHI, including:

The right to access, copy or inspect your PHI. This means you may come to our offices and inspect and copy most of the medical information about you that we maintain. We will normally provide you access to this information within 30 days of your request. We may also charge you a reasonable fee of $20.00 for any medical information that you have the right to access. In limited circumstances, we may deny you access to your medical information, and you may appeal certain types of denials.

We have available forms to request access to your PHI, and we will provide a written response if we deny you access and let you know your appeal rights. If you wish to inspect and copy our medical information, you should contact the privacy officer listed at the end of the notice.

For Payment. This includes any activities we must undertake in order to get reimbursed for the services we provide to you, including such things as organizing your PHI and submitting bills to insurance companies (either directly or through a third party billing company), management of billed claims for services rendered, medical necessity determinations and review, utilization review, and collection of outstanding accounts.

For health care operation. This includes quality assurance activities, licensing, and training programs to ensure that our personnel meet our standards of care and follow established policies and procedures, obtaining legal and financial services, conducting business planning, processing grievances and complaints, creating reports that do not individually identify you for data collection purposes, fundraising, and certain marketing activities.

Fundraising. We may contact you when we are in the process of raising funds for Lake Charlevoix EMS Authority.

Reminders for Scheduled Transports and Information on Other Services. We may also contact you to provide you with a reminder of any scheduled appointments for non-emergency ambulance and medical transportation, or for other information about alternative services we provide or other health-related benefits and services that may be of interest to you.

Use and Disclosure of PHI Without Your Authorization. Lake Charlevoix EMS Authority is permitted to use PHI without your written authorization, or opportunity to object in certain situations, including:

  • For Lake Charlevoix EMS Authority use in treating you or in obtaining payment for services provided to you or on other health care operations.
  • For treatment activities of another healthcare provider.
  • To another health care provider or entity for the payment activities of the provider or entity that receives the information (such as the hospital or the insurance company.
  • For health care fraud and abuse detection or for activities related to compliance with the law;
  • To another health care provider (such as the hospital to which you are transported) for the health care operations activities of the entity that receives the information as long as the entity receiving the information has or has had a relationship with you and the PHI pertains to that relationship;
  • To a family member, other relative, or close personal friend or other individual involved in your case if we obtain your verbal agreement to do so if we give you an opportunity to object to such a disclosure and you do not raise an objection. We may also disclose health information to your family, relatives, or friends if we infer from the circumstances that you would not object. For example, we may assume you agree to our disclosure of your PHI to your spouse when your spouse has called the ambulance for you. In situations where you are not capable of objecting (because you are not present or due to your incapacity or medical emergency), we may, in our professional judgment, determine that a disclosure to your family member, relative, or friend is in your best interest. In that situation, we will disclose only health information relevant to that person’s involvement in your care. For example, we may inform the person who accompanied you in the ambulance that you have certain symptoms and we may give that person an update on your vital signs and treatment that is being administered by our ambulance crew;
  • To a public health authority in certain situations such as reporting a birth, death or disease as required by law, as part of a public health investigation, to report child or adult abuse or neglect or domestic violence, to report adverse events such as product defects, or to notify a person about exposure to a possible communicable disease as required by law;
  • For health oversight activities including audits or government investigations, inspections, disciplinary proceedings, or other administrative or judicial actions undertaken by the government (or their contractors) by law to oversee the health care system;
  • For judicial and administrative proceedings as required by a court or administrative order, or in some cases in response to a subpoena or other legal process;
  • For law enforcement activities in limited situations, such as when there is a warrant to the request, or when the information is needed to locate a suspect or stop a crime;
  • For military, national defense and security and other special government functions;
  • To avert a serious threat to the health and safety of a person or the public at large;
  • For workers’ compensation purposes, and in compliance with workers’ compensation laws;
  • To coroners, medical examiners, and funeral directors for identifying a deceased person, determining cause of death, or carrying on their duties as authorized by law;
  • If you are an organ donor, we may release health information to organizations that handle organ procurement or organ, eye or tissue transplantation or to an organ donation bank, as necessary to facilitate organ donation and transplantation;
  • For research projects, but this will be subject to strict oversight and approvals and health information will be released only when there is a minimal risk to your privacy and adequate safeguards are in place in accordance with the law;
  • We may use or disclose health information about you in a way that does not personally identify you or reveal who you are.

Revisions to the Notice: Lake Charlevoix EMS Authority reserves the right to change the terms of this notice at any time, and the changes will be effective immediately and will apply to all Protected Health Information that we maintain. Any material changes to the Notice will be promptly posted in our facilities and posted to our web site, if we maintain one. You can get a copy of the lasted version of this Notice by contacting our Privacy Officer identified below.

Your Legal Rights and Complaints: You also have the right to complain to us, or to the Secretary of the United State Department of Health and Human Services if you believe your privacy rights have been violated. You will not be retaliated against in any way for filing a complaint with the government or us. Should you have any questions, comments or complaints, you may direct all inquiries to the privacy officer at the end of this Notice.

Jesse Silva
PO Box 731
Charlevoix, Mi 49720
(231) 547-7172 Option 3