Notice of Health Information privacy practices
of the Shelby County Health Department

This notice describes how health  information about you may be used and disclosed and how you can get access to this information. Please read carefully.

Understanding Your Health Record/Information

We understand that health information about you and your healthcare is personal. We are committed to protecting health information about you. We will create a record of the care and services you receive from us. We do so to provide you with quality care and to comply with any legal or regulatory requirements.

This notice applies to all of the records generated or received by Shelby County Health Department, whether we documented the health information, or another doctor forward it to us. This notice will tell you the ways in which we may use or disclose health information about you. This notice describes your rights to the health information we keep about you, and describe certain obligations we have regarding the use and disclosure of your health information.

Our pledge regarding your health information is backed up by Federal law. The privacy and security provisions of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (“HIPAA”) require us to:

• Make sure that health information that identifies you is kept private;
• Make available this notice of our legal duties and privacy practices with respect to health information about you; and
• Follow the terms of the notice that is currently in effect.

How we may use and disclose health information about you

The following categories describe different ways that we may use or disclose health information about you. Unless otherwise noted each of these uses and disclosures may be made without your permission. For each category of use or disclosure, we will explain what we mean and give some examples. Not every use or disclosure in a category will be listed. However, unless we ask for a separate authorization, all of the ways we are permitted to use and disclose information will fall within one of the categories.

For Treatment.  We may use health information about you to provide you with healthcare treatment and services. We may disclose health information about you to doctors, nurses technicians, health students, volunteers or other personnel who are involved in taking care of you. They may work at our offices, at a hospital if you are hospitalized under our supervision, or at another doctor’s office, lab pharmacy, or other healthcare provider to whom we may refer you for consultation, to take x-rays, to perform lab tests, to have prescriptions filled, or for other treatment purposes. For example, a doctor treating you may need to know if you have diabetes because diabetes may slow the healing process. We may provide that information to a physician treating you in another institution.

For Payment.  We may use or disclose health information about you that the treatment and services you receive from us may be billed to and payment collected from you, an insurance company, a state Medicaid agency or a third party. For example, we may need to give your health insurance plan information about your office visit so your health plan will pay us or reimburse you for the visit. Alternatively, we may need to give your health information to the state Medicaid agency so that we may be reimbursed for providing services to you. In some instances, we may need to tell your health plan about a treatment you are going to receive to obtain prior approval or to determine whether your plan will cover the treatment.

For Healthcare Operations.  We may use and disclose health information about you for operations of our healthcare practice. These uses and disclosures are necessary to run our practice and make sure that all of our clients receive quality care. For example, we may use health information to review our treatment and services an  to evaluate the performance of our staff in caring for you. We may also combine health information about many clients to decide what additional services we should offer, what services are not needed, whether certain new treatments are effective, or to compare how we are doing with others and to see where we can make improvements. We may remove information that identifies you from this set of health information so others may use it to study healthcare delivery without learning who our specific clients are.