Notice of Privacy Practices.
Effective Date: May 31, 2024
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.
Throughout this document, "Prime Direct Health," "we," "us," and "our" refer to the same legal entity.
Jump to a section- Scope of this Notice
- Our legal duties
- How we use and disclose information
- Treatment
- Payment
- Healthcare operations
- Information exchange
- Electronic disclosures
- Authorizations
- Family and friends
- Future communications
- Public health and safety
- Business associates
- Research
- Alcohol and drug-abuse information
- Your health information rights
- Revisions of this Notice
- How to report a complaint
- Prime Direct Health contact person
Scope of this Notice.
This Notice applies to Prime Direct Health and its medical staff.
This Notice identifies the general ways your protected health information can be used or disclosed. Protected health information refers to your personal health information found in your medical and billing records. This includes information, whether oral, written or recorded in electronic form, that is created or received by us and relates to your past, present or future physical or mental health conditions or the payment for healthcare services. This information can be transmitted or maintained in any form by Prime Direct Health.
This Notice describes your legal rights regarding your health information. It also informs you of our legal duties and privacy practices. If you receive services from a physician or healthcare provider not at Prime Direct Health, there may be different health information privacy policies or notices, and there will be different contact information.
Our legal duties.
Law requires us to keep your identifiable health information private, to provide you with this Notice of our legal duties and privacy practices with respect to your health information, and to follow the terms of the Notice as long as it is in effect. If we revise this Notice, we will follow the terms of the revised Notice, as long as it is in effect.
How we may use and disclose your health information.
The following describes how we are permitted, or required by law, to use and disclose your health information. Not every use or disclosure in a category will be listed.
Treatment.
We may use or disclose your health information to a physician or other healthcare provider in order to provide care and treatment to you. For example, a physician treating you for a broken leg may need to know if you have diabetes, because diabetes may slow the healing process. Different staff members at Prime Direct Health may also share information about you in order to coordinate the different services you receive, such as lab work, X-rays and prescriptions. We also may disclose health information about you to those who may be involved in your healthcare outside Prime Direct Health, such as physicians and others who provide you with follow-up care, and medical equipment or product suppliers. We may contact you to coordinate care after a visit; to provide appointment reminders; and to provide you with information about health-related benefits and services at Prime Direct Health, or treatment alternatives that may be of interest to you.
Payment.
We may use or disclose your health information to obtain payment for services we provide to you. We may disclose your health information to another healthcare provider or entity. For example, Prime Direct Health may need to provide your health plan with information about a service you received so your health plan will pay Prime Direct Health or reimburse you for that service. Prime Direct Health may also tell your health plan about a treatment you are going to receive, in order to obtain the health plan's prior approval for the treatment or to determine whether your plan will cover the treatment.
Healthcare operations.
We may use or disclose health information about you to support the programs and activities of Prime Direct Health, such as quality and service improvement, healthcare delivery review, staff performance evaluation, competence or qualification review of healthcare professionals, education and training of physicians and other healthcare providers, business planning and development, business management and general administrative activities. We use this information to continuously improve the quality of care for all patients we serve. For example, we may combine health information about many patients to evaluate the need for new services or treatments. We may disclose information for educational purposes to doctors, nurses and other students. And we may combine health information we have with that of other facilities to see where we can make improvements.
Additionally, we may share your health information with other healthcare providers and payors for certain elements of their business operations if the information is related to a relationship the provider or payor currently has or previously had with you, and if the provider or payor is required by federal law to protect the privacy of your health information.
Prime Direct Health Information Exchange.
We may make your health information available electronically, through an information exchange network, to other providers such as hospitals, laboratories and physicians involved in your care who request your electronic health information. The purpose of this information exchange is to support the delivery of safer and better-coordinated patient care. Participation in the information exchange is voluntary, and you may opt out by emailing info@primedirecthealth.com.
Electronic disclosures.
Prime Direct Health creates, receives, maintains and, in some instances, discloses your health information in an electronic format. We will obtain your written or electronic authorization prior to electronically disclosing your protected health information for any reason other than treatment, payment, healthcare operations or as otherwise authorized or required by law.