Please read our Privacy Practices Below

PRIVACY PRACTICES 

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. 

Your health information is personal and we are committed to protecting it. 

For purposes of this Notice, "Kindred Cares" and the pronouns "we," "us" and "our" refers to Kindred Connections Therapy Center, its subsidiaries Kindred Cares" and affiliates under common ownership, and its contracted employed health care providers. 

Kindred Cares uses and discloses health information about you for treatment, to obtain payment for treatment, for administrative purposes, to evaluate the quality of care you have received, and for other purposes permitted by HIPPA and applicable law.  Kindred Cares is required by law to maintain the privacy of your health information and provide you a notice of our legal duties and privacy practices with respect to that information and to provide you with notice of a breach of your unsecured protected health information. 

This notice applies to all records about your care that are created/or maintained by Kindred Connections Therapy Center. Your health information is contained in a medical record that is the physical property of Kindred Connections Therapy Center. Kindred Connections Therapy Center is required to abide by the terms of this Notice. 

Kindred Connections Therapy Center reserves the right to change its privacy practices, as reflected in this Notice, to revise this Notice, and to make the new provisions effective for all protected health information it maintains. Revised Notices will be available on our website upon your request. 

How Kindred Connections Therapy Center May Use or Disclose Your Health Information:

We may use or disclose your health information, in certain situations, without your consent or authorization. Below, we describe examples of how we may use, or disclose your health information as permitted under or required by federal law, including instances where we will obtain your authorization. Search uses or disclosures may be an oral, paper or electronic format.

For treatment. Kindred Connections Therapy Center may use and disclose your health information to provide you with mental health treatment or services or to assist in the coordination, the continuation or management of your care and any related services. This includes the coordination or management of your health care with a third-party. For example, a healthcare provider, such as a Licensed Independent Social Worker, or other person, providing health services services to you, will record information in your record that is related to your treatment. It may share the information with other providers. This information is necessary for other healthcare providers to determine which treatment you should receive.

For payment. Kindred Connections Therapy Center may use and disclose your health information to others for purposes of obtaining payments for treatment services that you receive. For example, Bill may be sent to you or a third-party payer, such as an insurance company or health plan, for services provided to you. Information on the bill, making some information that identifies you, your diagnosis, and treatment.

For healthcare operations. Kindred Connections Therapy Center may use and disclose health information about you for operational purposes. For example, your health information may be used by Kindred Connections therapy center or disclose by others in order to:

• Evaluate the performance of our staff, and or Contractor providers
• Assess the quality of care and outcomes in your case, and similar cases through audit and or evaluation: 
• Learn how to improve our services; and 
• Train other health care, professional students are interns.

Communications. Kindred Connections Therapy Center may use and disclose information to provide appointment reminders, leave a message on your answering machine, or leave a message with the individual who answers the phone at your residence. We may, from time to time, contact you to provide information about treatment, alternatives and services. That may be of interest to you. We may also provide you with information on materials, including information about Kindred Connections Therapy Center. Materials may come from a third-party.

Required or permitted by law. Kindred Connections Therapy Center may use and disclose information about you as required or permitted by law if the use or disclosure is required by law, the use or disclosure will be made in compliance with the law, and will be limited to the relevant requirements of the law. If required by law, you will be notified of such uses or disclosures. For example, Kindred Connections Therapy Center may use, and or disclose information for the following purposes:

• For judicial administrative proceedings, pursuant to  legal authority or court order; 
• To assist law enforcement officials in their enforcement dutyies 
• In the instance of a breach involving your unsecure health information, to notify you, law enforcement, and regulatory authorities, as necessary, of the situation, and others, as appropriate to help resolve the situation; or 
• To health oversight agency is responsible for monitoring the healthcare system and government programs.

Public health. Your health information, may be used or disclose for public public health activities, such as one assisting public health authorities, or other legal authority to prevent or control disease, injury, or Disabilities; to report child abuse or neglect to a public health authority or other governmental authority that is authorized by law, to receive  such reports; to notify a person who may be at risk of contracting, are spreading a disease, if such disclosure is authorized by law.

Individuals involved in your care. We may provide information about you to a family member, friend, or other person involved in your healthcare or in payment for your health care. If you are deceased, we may disclose medical information about you to a friend or family member who was involved in your medical care prior to your death, limited to Information relevant to that person’s involvement, unless doing so, would be inconsistent with your written wishes you previously provided to us. If we disclose information to a family member, relative or close personal friend, we will disclose only information that we believe is relevant to that person's involvement with your healthcare or payment related to your health care.

Health and safety. We may, consistent with applicable law and standards of ethical conduct, use or disclose health information about you, if we believe that the use or disclosure is necessarily to prevent or less than a serious threat to their health or safety of a person or the public; provided that if a disclosure is made, it must be to a person(s) reasonable ability to prevent or lessen the threat and is permissible by law. We may also use or disclosure health information if we believe that use or disclosure is necessary for law enforcement authority, to identify or apprehend individual who admits to participation in violent crime, that we reasonably believe caused physical harm to the victim, or appears to have escaped from a correctional institution, or lawful custody.

Notification of disaster relief. We may use or disclose health information to notify or assist in notifying your family, a personal relative, or other person responsible for your care, of your location, condition, or death. We may disclose your health information to disaster relief authorities, so that your family can be notified of your location and condition.

Descendants. Health information may be disclosed to funeral directors, medical, examiners, or coroners to enable them to carry out their lawful duties. Once you have been deceased, for 50 years (or such other period as may be specified by law) we may use and disclose health information without regard to the restriction, set forth in his notice.

Government functions. We may disclose your health information for specialized government functions, such as military and veteran activities, national security, and intelligence activities, and protection of public officials.

Workers compensation. Your health information may be used or disclosed in order to comply with laws and regulations related to Worker’s Compensation.

Business associates. We may contract with one or more third parties, our business associates, and the course of our business operations. We may disclose your health information to our business associate so that they can perform the job we have asked them to do. We require that our business associates sign a business associate agreement, and agree to safeguard the privacy and security of your health information.

Authorizations for other uses and disclosures:
While we may use or disclose your health information without your written authorization as explained above, there are other instances where we will obtain your written authorization. Except as otherwise provided in this notice, we will not use or disclose your health information without your prior written authorization. You may revoke an authorization at any time, except to the extent that Kindred Connections Therapy Ceter has already relied on the authorization and taking action.

Examples of use and disclosure that require your authorization are:

Psychotherapy notes. If psychotherapy notes are created for your treatment, we must obtain your prior written authorization before using or disclosing them, except:

1. If the creator of those notes needs to use, or disclose them for treatment,
2. For use or disclosure in our own supervised training programs in mental health, or
3. For use or disclosure in connection with our defense of a proceeding brought by you. 

Psychotherapy notes means notes, recorded, in any medium, by a healthcare provider, who is a mental health, professional, documenting, or analyzing the contents of conversation during a private counseling session or a group, joint, or family counseling session, and that are separated from the rest of the individuals medical record.“Psychotherapy notes" excludes, medical prescriptions and monitoring, counseling session, start and stop times, the modalities and frequency of treatment, furnace, results of clinical test, and any summary of the following items: diagnosis, functional status, the treatment plan, symptoms, prognosis, and progress today. Know that if, and the sole discretion of your healthcare provider, providing you with copies of your psychotherapy notes could be harmful or detrimental, we have the right to deny your request for such records.

Marketing. As outlined in our privacy policy, we may contact you with newsletters, marketing, or promotional materials, and other information that may be helpful to you. By agreeing to our privacy policy, you authorize us to contact you for marketing purposes.

No sale of your health information. We will never sell your identifiable health information to a third-party. Our promise.

Uses and disclosures of your highly confidential information. Some federal, and or state laws require specific privacy protections for certain, highly confidential health information related to: 

1.  psychotherapy services; 
2. mental health in Developmental Disabilities services;
3. substance use disorder, diagnosis, treatment, and referral; 
4. HIV/AIDS testing, diagnosis or treatment; 
5. venereal diseases; 
6. genetic testing; 
7. child abuse and neglect; 
8. domestic abuse of an adult with a disability; and or
9. sexual assault. 

Unless a use or disclosure is permitted or required by law, we will obtain your written consent or authorization prior to using or disclosing your highly confidential health information to third parties.

Your health, information rights:
You have the following rights regarding your health information. To exercise any of the rights below please contact Kindred Connections Therapy Center at Help@kindredconnectionstherapycenter.com to obtain the proper forms.

You have the right to:

Request a restriction on the use and disclosure of your information for treatment, payment and healthcare operations, or request the limit on the health information, we disclose about you to someone involved in your care, or the payment for your care, like a family, member, or friend:

• If you have paid for services or healthcare items out of pocket or in full, and you asked us not to share the information with your health insurer for purposes of payment, or our operations, (not treatment), we will agree with your request, unless a law requires us to share information. We’re all other requests, we will consider your request.
• If we do agree to your request, we will comply with your request unless the information is needed to provide you with emergency treatment.
• Except for restrictions that we must comply with related to health plans, we may terminate our agreement to a restriction at any time, by know, if notifying you in writing, but our termination will only apply to Information, created or received after we sent you the notice of termination, unless you agree to have the termination retroactive.

Obtain a paper copy of this notice upon request. You may obtain a paper copy of his notice by contacting Help@kindredconnectionstherapy.com. The notice is also available on our website, www.kindredconnectionstherapy.com.

Inspect and obtain a copy of your health and billing records. All requests to inspect or copy your health information or to ask this directly your records must be in writing. Please email us to submit your request to access your form. In certain circumstances, we may deny your request for inspection or copying, but if we do, we will notify you in writing of the reason or reasons for the denial and explain your rights to have the denial reviewed. 

You can direct us to transmit the copy directly to another person or entity using our internal form. At this time we are not able to prepare summaries, attestations, certifications, notarized, or witnessed copies. Please note that Kindred Connections Therapy Center will only respond to requests for records from you or your personal representative.

Request an amendment to your health information. You may request that your health record be amended if you believe that the health information we have about you was incomplete or incorrect. Requests to amend your health information must be in writing. We may deny your request, and if we do, we will notify you of the reason for the denial in your right to obtain a statement disagreeing with the denial.

Request confidential communications. You have the right to ask Kindred Connections Therapy Center to communicate health information to you using alternative means or an alternative location. Such requests must be in writing. We will accommodate reasonable requests and will notify you if we are unable to agree to your request. We may condition our agreement on information as to how payment will be handled and specifications on an alternative address or other method of contact.

Receive an accounting of disclosure of your health information. You have the right to obtain a list of instances in which Kindred Connections Therapy Center has disclosed your health information, except in certain instances. These instances include but are not limited to: disclosure for treatment, payment and healthcare operation; disclosures made to you; disclosures incident to a use or disclosure, permitted or authorized by the federal HIPPA privacy rule; disclosures authorized by you; and disclosures occurring more than six years prior to the date of your request. Your request must be in writing. The first disclosure list in a year is free; if you request an additional list in any year, we may charge you a fee.

Complaints

You may complain to Kindred Connections, Therapy Center and to the Department of Health and Human Services. If you believe your privacy rights have been violated. You will not be retaliated against when filing a complaint.

If you have any questions or complaints about this notice or our privacy practices, please contact [email protected]