The Milky Way NOTICE OF PRIVACY PRACTICES
EFFECTIVE DATE: APRIL 10, 2018
THIS NOTICE DESCRIBES HOW MEDICAL INFORMATION ABOUT YOU MAY BE USED AND DISCLOSED AND HOW YOU CAN GET ACCESS TO THIS INFORMATION. PLEASE REVIEW IT CAREFULLY.
UNDERSTANDING YOUR HEALTH RECORD/INFORMATION
Each time you visit a hospital, physician, dentist, or other healthcare provider, a record of your visit is made. Typically, this record contains your symptoms, examination and test results, diagnoses, treatment, and a plan for future care or treatment. This information often referred to as your health or medical record, serves as a basis for planning your care and treatment and serves as a means of communication among the many health professionals who contribute to your care. Understanding what is in your record and how your health information is used helps you to ensure its accuracy, better understand who, what, when, where, and why others may access your health information, and helps you make more informed decisions when authorizing disclosure to others.
YOUR HEALTH INFORMATION RIGHTS
Unless otherwise required by law, your health record is the physical property of the healthcare practitioner or facility that compiled it. However, you have certain rights with respect to the information. You have the right to:
- Receive a copy of this Notice of Privacy Practices from us upon enrollment or upon request.
- Request restrictions on our uses and disclosures of your protected health information for treatment, payment and health care operations. However, we reserve the right not to agree to the requested restriction.
- Request to receive communications of protected health information in confidence.
- Inspect and obtain a copy of the protected health information contained in your medical and billing records and in any other Practice records used by us to make decisions about you. A reasonable copying charge may apply.
- Request an amendment to your protected health information. However, we may deny your request for an amendment, if we determine that the protected health information or record that is the subject of the request:
- was not created by us, unless you provide a reasonable basis to believe that the originator of the protected health
information is no longer available to act on the requested amendment;
- is not part of your medical or billing records;
- is not available for inspection as set forth above; or
- is accurate and complete.
In any event, any agreed upon amendment will be included as an addition to, and not a replacement of, already existing records.
- Receive an accounting of disclosures of protected health information made by us to individuals or entities other than to you, except for disclosures:
- to carry out treatment, payment and health care operations as provided above;
- to persons involved in your care or for other notification purposes as provided by law;
- to correctional institutions or law enforcement officials as provided by law;
- for national security or intelligence purposes;
- that occurred prior to the date of compliance with privacy standards (April 14, 2003);
- incidental to other permissible uses or disclosures;
- that are part of a limited data set (does not contain protected health information that directly identifies individuals);
- made to patient or their personal representatives;
- for which a written authorization form from the patient has been received
- Revoke your authorization to use or disclose health information except to the extent that we have already been taken action in reliance on your authorization, or if the authorization was obtained as a condition of obtaining insurance coverage and other applicable law provides the insurer that obtained the authorization with the right to contest a claim under the policy.
- Breach Notification. In the case of a breach of unsecured protected health information, we will notify you as required by law. If you have provided us with a current e-mail address, we may use e-mail to communicate information related to the breach.
OUR RESPONSIBILITIES
We are required to maintain the privacy of your health information. In addition, we are required to provide you with a notice of our legal duties and privacy practices with respect to information we collect and maintain about you. We must abide by the terms of this notice. We reserve the right to change our practices and to make the new provisions effective for all the protected health information we maintain. If our information practices change, a revised notice will be mailed to the address you have supplied upon request. If we maintain a Web site that provides information about our patient/customer services or benefits, the new notice will be posted on that Web site. Your health information will not be used or disclosed without your written authorization, except as described in this notice. Except as noted above, you may revoke your authorization in writing at any time.
FOR MORE INFORMATION OR TO REPORT A PROBLEM
If you have questions about this notice or would like additional information, you may contact our Privacy Officer at the telephone or address below. If you believe that your privacy rights have been violated, you have the right to file a complaint with the practice’s Privacy Officer or with the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. The DHHS complaint form may be found at www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/complaints/hipcomplaint.pdf. You will not be penalized in any way for filing a complaint. The contact information for both is included below.
The Milky Way
Kimberly Hamm, Privacy Officer
815 N Main St
Lumberton, TX
409-237-3550
Who we are
Our website address is: http://themilkywaylactation.com.
What personal data we collect and why we collect it
Comments
When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.
An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
Media
If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.
Contact forms
Cookies
If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.
If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.
When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.
If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.
Embedded content from other websites
Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.
These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
Analytics
Who we share your data with
How long we retain your data
If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.
What rights you have over your data
If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
Where we send your data
Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.