Northwest Physicians Notice of Privacy Practices, Revised January 6, 2021This 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. The privacy of your medical information is important to us.Overview: The law requires us to keep your protected health information (PHI) private in accordance with this Notice of Privacy Practices (Notice), as long as this Notice remains in effect. We are also required to provide you with a paper copy of this Notice, which contains our privacy practices, our legal duties, and your rights concerning your PHI. We may revise our privacy practices and terms of our Notice will be updated and made available to our patients prior to any significant revisions of our Privacy Practices and polices.Our Privacy Practices:Use and Disclosure: We may use or disclose your PHI for treatment, payment of health care operations. For your convenience, we have provided the following examples of such potential uses or disclosures:Treatment: Your PHI may be used by or disclosed to any physicians or other health care providers involved with the medical services provided to you.Payment: Your PHI may be used or disclosed in order to collect payment for the medical services provided to you.Heath Care Operations: Your PHI may be used or disclosed as part of our internal health care operations. Such health care operations may include among other things, quality of care audits of our staff and affiliates, conduction training programs, accreditations, certifications, licensing or credentialing activities.Authorizations: we will not use or disclose your medical information for any reason except those described in this Notice unless you provide us with a written authorization to do so. We may request such an authorization to use or disclose your PHI for any purpose, but your are not required to give us such authorization as a condition of your treatment. You may revoke any written authorization from yourself in writing at any time, but such revocation will not affect any prior authorized uses or disclosures. There are certain disclosures that do require authorization from you before disclosure. These include any psychotherapy notes from a mental health professional that are kept separate from the record itself. Our office will not ever use your PHI for marketing purposes, and we will not ever sell your PHI.Restricting Information Release: If you pay for a service in full out of pocket, you may request that we do not disclose any information regarding that particular service to your insurance company by requesting this in writing.Patient Access: We will provide you with access to your PHI, as described below in the Individual Rights section of this Notice. With your permission, or in some emergencies, we may disclose your PHI to your family members, friends, or other people to aid in your treatment or the collection of payment. A disclosure of your PHI may also be made if we determine it is reasonably necessary or in your best interests for such purposes as allowing a person acting on your behalf to receive filled prescriptions, medical supplies, x-rays, etc.Locating Responsible Parties: Your PHI may be disclosed in order to locate, identify or notify a family member, your personal representative or other person responsible for your care. If we determine in our reasonable professional judgement that you are capable of doin so, you will be given the opportunity to consent to or to prohibit or restrict the extent or recipients of such disclosure. If we determine that your are unable to provide such consent, we will limit the PHI disclosed to the minimum necessary.Continuing Care: Based upon your PHI< we may provide you with appointment reminders, some of which will be sent in postcard form, over your cell phone, or through the patient portal, or information concerning health issues, benefits and services or treatment alternative that we believe may be of interest to you.Disasters: We may use or disclose your PHI to any public or private entity authorized by law or by its charter to assist in disaster relief efforts.