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.

Koehler Mental Health and Wellness is required by law to protect the privacy of your health information, to give you this notice of our legal duties and privacy practices, and to follow the terms of the notice currently in effect.

Uses and disclosures that do not need your authorization

Treatment

We may use your health information to provide your care, and share it with other clinicians involved in it — for example your therapist, your primary care physician, a pharmacy filling a prescription, or a laboratory running tests we ordered.

Payment

We may use and disclose your information to bill and collect payment for your care — for example to confirm your coverage, obtain prior authorization, or submit a claim to your health plan.

Health care operations

We may use your information to run the practice: quality review, training, licensing and accreditation, and business management.

Other situations permitted or required by law

• As required by law — when a federal, state or local law compels disclosure.
• Public health — to authorities preventing or controlling disease, injury or disability.
• Abuse or neglect — reports of suspected child, elder or dependent adult abuse, as California law requires.
• Health oversight — to agencies conducting audits, investigations, inspections and licensure activity.
• Judicial and administrative proceedings — in response to a court order, or to a subpoena or discovery request that satisfies the applicable legal requirements.
• Law enforcement — in the limited circumstances the law defines.
• To avert a serious threat — when disclosure is necessary to prevent a serious and imminent threat to your health or safety or that of another person. California law also imposes a duty to warn and protect in specific circumstances involving threats of violence.
• Coroners, medical examiners and funeral directors — as needed for them to carry out their duties.
• Workers' compensation — as authorized by workers' compensation law.
• Specialized government functions — military, national security and correctional situations defined by law.
• Business associates — vendors who perform services for us, each under a written agreement requiring them to protect your information.

Uses and disclosures that need your written authorization

Other uses and disclosures require your written authorization, which you may revoke at any time in writing — except to the extent we have already acted on it. Your written authorization is specifically required for:

• Most uses and disclosures of psychotherapy notes.
• Any use or disclosure for marketing purposes.
• Any sale of your health information, which we do not do.

California law provides additional protection for mental health information, and in several situations we will seek your written authorization even where federal law alone would not require it.

Your rights

To see and get a copy of your records

You may inspect and obtain a copy of your health record, including an electronic copy where we hold it electronically. We may charge a reasonable, cost-based fee. In limited circumstances involving psychotherapy notes or a risk of harm, access may be denied, and you may have that denial reviewed.

California gives you faster access than federal law does, and we work to the California timelines. You may inspect your records within five working days of a written request, and we will provide copies within fifteen days. Federal law would allow us thirty; there is no good reason to take it.

To ask us to correct your record

If you believe something in your record is wrong or incomplete you may ask us to amend it. We may deny the request, and if we do we will explain why in writing and you may file a statement of disagreement that becomes part of the record.

To an accounting of disclosures

You may request a list of certain disclosures we have made of your health information in the six years before your request.

To request restrictions

You may ask us to limit how we use or disclose your information. We are not required to agree, with one exception we must honour: if you pay for a service in full out of pocket, you may direct us not to disclose information about that service to your health plan.

To confidential communications

You may ask us to contact you in a particular way or at a particular address — a specific phone number, no voicemail, mail to a different address. We will accommodate reasonable requests and will not ask you why.

To choose email, knowing what that means

Ordinary email is not a secure channel. If you would still rather we use it — and many people would — you may ask us to, once we have explained the risk. We will honour that, note it in your record, and you can change your mind at any time. Anything genuinely sensitive still belongs in the patient portal.

To a paper copy of this notice

You may ask for a paper copy at any time, even if you agreed to receive it electronically.

To be notified of a breach

We will notify you if a breach occurs that compromises the privacy or security of your information.

Who this applies to

Our practice treats adults aged 18 and over. We do not routinely provide care to minors, so the parental access questions that arise in paediatric practice generally do not apply here. Where an adult patient has a conservator, guardian or a personal representative with legal authority, that person may exercise these rights on the patient's behalf, and we will verify that authority before acting on it.

Our obligations

We are required by law to maintain the privacy of your health information, to provide this notice, and to abide by its terms. We reserve the right to change this notice and to make the revised notice effective for information we already hold as well as information we receive in the future. The current version will always be posted on this page and available in the office.

Complaints

If you believe your privacy rights have been violated, tell us using the contact details below, or file a complaint with the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights. You will not be retaliated against for filing a complaint.