Quality Women's Care of Florida

Notice of Privacy Practices
THIS NOTICE DESCRIBES HOW MEDICAL INFORMATION ABOUT YOU MAY BE USED AND DISCLOSED AND HOW YOU CAN GET ACCESS TO THIS INFORMATION

This agreement can be modified by Quality Women's Care of Florida at any time and any such modification will be effective immediately upon posting. By accessing and using this website, you assent to these terms and conditions.

Medical Disclaimer

If you think you have a medical emergency, call your doctor or 911 immediately. Do not rely on electronic communications or communication through this website for immediate, urgent medical needs. This website is not designed to facilitate medical emergencies.

Health Content

This website does not provide medical advice.

Some information on the site is written by health care providers affiliated with Quality Women's Care of Florida and its affiliates, and some content is provided by outside sources.

The content of this website, such as graphics, images, text and all other materials, is provided for reference and educational purposes only. The content is not meant to be complete or exhaustive or to be applicable to any specific individual's medical condition.

Quality Women's Care of Florida assumes no duty to correct or update the website nor to resolve or clarify any inconsistent information that might be a part of the website. This website contains health or medically related materials that can be considered sexually explicit. If you find these materials offensive, do not use this website.

This website is not an attempt to practice medicine or provide specific medical advice, and it should not be used to make a diagnosis or to replace or overrule a qualified health care provider's judgment. Users should not rely up this website for emergency medical treatment. The content on this website is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always consult with a qualified and licensed physician or other medical care provider, and follow their advice without delay regardless of anything read on this website.

Liability

You assume full responsibility for using the information on this site, and you understand and agree that Quality Women's Care of Florida, is not responsible or liable for any claim, loss or damage resulting from its use by you or any user.

Quality Women's Care of Florida cannot and does not warrant that access to the site will be error- or virus-free and does not guarantee against unauthorized users or hackers attempting to obtain access to this website.

Quality Women's Care of Florida does not intentionally or knowingly collect personal information from children under age 18. If you are under the age of 18, please consult a parent or guardian for help in using this website.

Accuracy and Timeliness

Although we try to keep the information on the site as accurate as possible, Quality Women's Care of Florida disclaims any warranty concerning its accuracy, timeliness and completeness of content, and any other warranty, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Quality Women's Care of Florida also reserves the right to temporarily or permanently discontinue this website, any page or any functionality at any time and without any notice.

External Links

In order to provide website users with other helpful information, the Quality Women's Care of Florida website contains links to other websites. However, Quality Women's Care of Florida provides no authority over external organizations’ websites, and this policy does not apply to external sites that are provided as links. Pages of external websites might have different terms of use. Quality Women's Care of Florida provides links to certain external websites as a convenience to visitors of its website; the existence of a link is not intended to be, and should not be taken as, an endorsement by Quality Women's Care of Florida of any product or service that may be available through such external websites.

The Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act of 1996 ("HIPAA") is a Federal program that requests that all medical records and other individually identifiable health information used or disclosed by us in any form, whether electronically, on paper, or orally are kept properly confidential. This Act gives you, the patient, the right to understand and control how your protected health information ("PHI") is used. HIPAA provides penalties for covered entities that misuse personal health information.

As required by HIPAA, we prepared this explanation of how we are to maintain the privacy of your health information and how we may disclose your personal information.

We may use and disclose your medical records only for each of the following purposes: treatment, payment and health care operation (TPO).

Treatment means providing, coordinating, or managing health care and related services by one or more healthcare providers. An example of this is a primary care doctor referring you to a specialist doctor. Payment means such activities as obtaining reimbursement for services, confirming coverage, billing or collections activities, and utilization review. An example of this would include sending your insurance company a bill for your visit and/or verifying coverage prior to a surgery. Health Care Operations include business aspects of running our practice, such as conducting quality assessments and improving activities, auditing functions, cost management analysis, and customer service. An example of this would be new patient survey cards. The practice may also be required or permitted to disclose your PHI for law enforcement and other legitimate reasons. In all situations, we shall do our best to assure its continued confidentiality to the extent possible. We may also create and distribute de-identified health information by removing all reference to individually identifiable information.

We may contact you, by phone or in writing, to provide appointment reminders or information about treatment alternatives or other health-related benefits and services, in addition to other fundraising communications, that may be of interest to you. You do have the right to "opt out" with respect to receiving fundraising communications from us.

The following use and disclosures of PHI will only be made pursuant to us receiving a written authorization from you:

Uses and disclosure of your PHI for marketing purposes, including subsidized treatment and health care operations; Disclosures that represent a sale of PHI under HIPAA; and Other uses and disclosures not described in this notice. You may revoke such authorization in writing and we are required to honor and abide by that written request, except to the extent that we have already taken actions relying on your prior authorization.

You may have the following rights with respect to your PHI:

The right to request restrictions on certain uses and disclosures of PHI, including those related to disclosures to family members, other relatives, close personal friends, or any other person identified by you. We are, however, not required to honor a request restriction except in limited circumstances which we shall explain if you ask. If we do agree to the restriction, we must abide by it unless you agree in writing to remove it. The right to reasonable requests to receive confidential communications of Protected Health Information by alternative means or at alternative locations. The right to inspect and copy your PHI. The right to amend your PHI. The right to receive an accounting of disclosures of your PHI. The right to obtain a paper copy of this notice from us upon request. The right to be advised if your unprotected PHI is intentionally or unintentionally disclosed. If you have paid for services "out of pocket", in full and in advance, and you request that we not disclose PHI related solely to those services to a health plan, we will accommodate your request, except where we are required by law to make a disclosure.

We are required by law to maintain the privacy of your PHI and to provide you the notice of our legal duties and our privacy practice with respect to PHI.

This notice is effective as of January 1, 2017 and it is our intention to abide by the terms of the Notice of Privacy Practices and HIPAA Regulations currently in effect. We reserve the right to change the terms of our Notice of Privacy Practice and to make the new notice provision effective for all PHI that we maintain. We will post a copy and you may request a written copy of the revised Notice of Privacy Practice from our office.

You have recourse if you feel that your protections have been violated by our office. You have the right to file a formal, written complaint with the practice and with the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Civil Rights. We will not retaliate against you for filing a complaint.

Feel free to contact the Practice Compliance Officer for more information, in person or in writing.

We will review this disclaimer frequently and reserve the right to revise it periodically. If we make changes to this policy, we will post the updated policy here.