Like many health care providers we collect, use and disclose personal information in order to serve our patients. The primary reason we collect this information to provide quality care. Contact information is collected to organize appointments and allow communication between patients and the clinic. Information is collected from a physical examination, discussion of health history, work, activities and lifestyle to better understand patients health needs and develop the most appropriate plan of care.
There are secondary reasons to collect, use and disclose information collected from patients. Information is used to generate accurate invoicing for various third party payers including private insurance providers, automotive insurance providers and workers compensation firms. With your consent reports are provided to your family doctor, your other health providers, third party payers, law firms or other professionals.
We Protect Personal Information
We understand the importance of protecting personal information. For that reason, we have taken the following steps:
- Paper information is either under supervision or secured in a locked or restricted area.
- Electronic hardware is either under supervision or secured in a locked or restricted area at all times. In addition, passwords are used on computers.
- Paper information is transmitted through sealed, addressed envelopes or boxes by reputable companies.
- Electronic information is transmitted either through a direct line or is anonymized or encrypted.
- Staff is trained to collect, use and disclose personal information only as necessary to fulfill their duties and in accordance with our privacy policy.
- External consultants and agencies with access to personal information must enter into privacy agreements with us.
Retention and Destruction of Personal Information
We need to retain personal information for some time to ensure that we can answer any questions you might have about the services provided and for our own accountability to external regulatory bodies. However, we do not want to keep personal information too long in order to protect your privacy.
We keep our client files for about ten years. Our client and contact directories are much more difficult to systematically destroy, so we remove such information when we can if it does not appear that we will be contacting you again. However, if you ask, we will remove such contact information right away. We destroy paper files containing personal information by shredding. We destroy electronic information by deleting it and, when the hardware is discarded, we ensure that the hard drive is physically destroyed.
