Notice of Privacy Practices

1.Who this notice covers

This notice applies to TrufaMED Urgent Care & Concierge Medicine at 9445 Harding Ave, Surfside, FL 33154, and to every physician, nurse, technician, employee, student, and contractor who provides care or support services at our clinic or on our behalf. It also covers care delivered away from the clinic, including concierge visits and house calls.

Health information that identifies you and relates to your health, your care, or payment for your care is called protected health information. This notice uses the phrase your health information to mean the same thing. It covers what we hold in our electronic health record, on paper, and in the messages we exchange with you.

2.Treatment

We use and share your health information to provide, coordinate, and manage your care.

Example. You walk into our urgent care with a wrist injury. The physician orders an X-ray, the images and the reading go into your chart, and your prescription goes electronically to your pharmacy. If the physician refers you to an orthopedic surgeon, we send that surgeon your images, exam findings, and relevant history so the referral visit starts from a complete record.

3.Payment

We use and share your health information to bill and collect for the care you receive.

Example. When we submit a claim to your insurance carrier, the claim carries your name, date of birth, member number, diagnosis codes, and procedure codes, because the carrier will not process it without them. If you pay out of pocket and ask us for a superbill so you can seek reimbursement yourself, that document carries the same clinical detail. We may also contact your plan to check coverage or obtain prior authorization before a service.

4.Health care operations

We use and share your health information to run the practice and hold the quality of care to our standard.

Example. Our physicians review a sample of charts, including notes written by other clinicians, to confirm that documentation, orders, results, and follow-up met our standards. Accreditation surveyors review records for the same reason. Operations also cover staff training and supervision, licensing and credentialing, business planning, and resolving a complaint or a billing dispute.

5.Other uses and disclosures that do not need your permission

5.1Appointment reminders, results, and health information

We may contact you by phone, voicemail, text message, email, or through our patient app to remind you of an appointment, tell you that a result is ready, ask you to schedule follow-up care, or tell you about a treatment option or health service that may be relevant to you. Text messages and email travel over networks we do not control, and we cannot guarantee that a message sent that way stays private. Tell the front desk if you would rather we use a different method, and we will.

5.2Family, friends, and others involved in your care

We may share information relevant to a person’s involvement with a family member, a friend, or anyone else you identify as helping with your care or helping pay for it. If you are present and able to decide, we ask you first or give you the chance to object. If you cannot decide for yourself, we use professional judgment and share only what that person needs to help you.

5.3Public health

We may report to public health authorities to prevent or control disease, injury, or disability. This includes reportable communicable disease results and immunizations sent to the Florida Department of Health and to immunization registries such as Florida SHOTS, and adverse events or product problems reported to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

5.4Health oversight

We may share information with agencies that audit, investigate, license, inspect, or accredit health care providers. These include the Florida Department of Health, the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

5.5Law enforcement and legal proceedings

We may share information when a law requires it, in response to a court order, subpoena, warrant, or other lawful process, to report certain wounds and injuries, to help identify or locate a person to the extent the law permits, and when the information concerns a suspected victim of abuse, neglect, or domestic violence.

5.6To prevent a serious threat

We may share information when we believe in good faith that doing so is necessary to prevent or lessen a serious and imminent threat to your health or safety or to the health or safety of someone else. The disclosure goes only to a person in a position to prevent or lessen that threat.

5.7Workers’ compensation

We may share information as authorized by Florida workers’ compensation law when your visit relates to a work injury.

5.8Coroners, medical examiners, funeral directors, and organ procurement

We may share information with a coroner or medical examiner to identify a person or determine a cause of death, with a funeral director as needed to carry out their duties, and with organ procurement organizations for donation and transplantation.

5.9Business associates

Some services are performed for us by outside companies that need your health information to do the work. Each one signs a written agreement requiring it to safeguard your information and use it only for the work we hired it to do. The categories are our electronic health record and patient app vendors, our billing and revenue cycle companies, the laboratory and imaging partners that run and read our tests, and the vendors that deliver our text messages and email.

5.10Disaster relief

We may share information with a public or private organization assisting in disaster relief so that your family can be told where you are and how you are doing.

5.11De-identified and summary information

We may use and share information after the identifiers required by the federal privacy rule have been removed, so that it no longer identifies you. We may also produce summary or statistical information that does not identify you.

6.Uses and disclosures that need your written authorization

We will ask for your written authorization before we do any of the following:

• use or share your health information for marketing, apart from a face to face conversation with you or a promotional gift of nominal value;
• sell your health information;
• share psychotherapy notes, apart from the narrow situations the federal privacy rule allows;
• use or share your health information for any purpose this notice does not describe.

You may revoke an authorization at any time by writing to our Privacy Officer. Revoking it stops any further use or sharing under that authorization. It cannot undo what we already did while the authorization was in effect.

7.Your rights

7.1See and get a copy of your record

You may inspect and get a copy of the health information we use to make decisions about you, including an electronic copy when we keep the record electronically. Ask us in writing. We will act on your request within 30 days, and we may take one 30 day extension if we tell you why in writing. We may charge a reasonable, cost based fee for copying, postage, and preparing any summary or explanation you asked for.

7.2Ask us to correct your record

If you believe something in your record is wrong or incomplete, ask us in writing to amend it and tell us why. We may deny the request, for example when we did not create the record or when we find the entry accurate and complete. If we deny it we will tell you in writing, and you may file a statement of disagreement that we will keep with your record.

7.3Get a list of disclosures

You may ask for an accounting of the disclosures we made of your health information during the six years before the date of your request. The accounting leaves out disclosures made for treatment, payment, and health care operations, disclosures you authorized, and the other categories the federal privacy rule excludes. One accounting in any 12 month period is free.

7.4Ask us to limit what we use or share

You may ask us to restrict how we use or share your health information for treatment, payment, or health care operations. We are not required to agree. There is one request we must honor: if you pay for an item or service in full out of pocket and ask us not to send that information to your health plan, we will not send it, unless a law requires the disclosure.

7.5Ask us to contact you a different way

You may ask us to reach you at a different phone number or address, or by a different method. Ask us in writing. We will accommodate reasonable requests and will not ask you why.

7.6Get a paper copy of this notice

You may ask for a paper copy of this notice at any time, including when you have already agreed to receive it electronically. Ask at the front desk and we will hand you one.

7.7Be told if your information is breached

We will notify you if we discover a breach of your unsecured health information, as the law requires.

7.8Choose someone to act for you

If you have given someone a health care power of attorney, or a court has appointed a guardian, that person may exercise these rights and make choices about your health information. We will confirm the person holds that authority before we act on the request.

8.Our responsibilities

The law requires us to keep your health information private, to give you this notice describing our legal duties and privacy practices, and to follow the terms of the notice currently in effect. The law also requires us to notify you following a breach of your unsecured health information. We will not use or share your health information in any way this notice does not describe unless you give us written permission, and we will honor your decision to revoke that permission.

9.Changes to this notice

We may change this notice. A change applies to the health information we already hold as well as to information we create later. The current version is posted at trufamed.com/notice-of-privacy-practices, a paper copy is available at the front desk, and the effective date appears at the top of this page.

10.Florida law

Some Florida laws protect health information more strictly than federal law, including records that relate to HIV testing and results, mental health treatment, and substance use treatment. Where Florida law is stricter, we follow Florida law.

11.How to file a complaint

If you believe your privacy rights have been violated, you may file a complaint with us, with the federal government, or with both. No one at TrufaMED will retaliate against you for filing a complaint, and your care will not change because you filed one.

With us. Write to or call our Privacy Officer at the address and phone number below.

With the federal government. Office for Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 200 Independence Avenue SW, Washington, DC 20201. Phone 1-877-696-6775. Complaint portal: www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/complaints/

12.Who to contact

For a copy of your record, to exercise any right described in section 7, or to ask a question about this notice, contact: