Hoosick Street Pediatrics follows HIPAA regulations and requirements. Protected Health Information (PHI) is only disclosed to other healthcare providers, your health insurance carrier, and those who have signed agreements that PHI is used only to conduct treatment and/or the operations of healthcare. If you have questions regarding the Privacy Practices of Hoosick Street Pediatrics or HIPAA as it pertains to you and your family, please give us a call at 518-273-3732.
Access to medical records: You have the right to access your medical records. Our office may charge a reasonable fee for providing the records, including the labor cost, cost of media, and postage where applicable. Access to records through your patient portal is free. If you would like a copy of records on portable media, we will download records to a thumb-drive or other electronic media for the cost the media (the cost of a thumb drive is approximately $5.00) and the postage (if it is being mailed.) Paper copies of records can be extensive and therefor more expensive. New York State allows healthcare providers to charge up to $0.75 per page for medical records. Upon request, we can provide an estimated cost of providing medical records in the format requested.
Changes to HIPAA that will go into effect in 2021 include:
- Notices of privacy practices expressly permit disclosures to Telecommunications Relay Services (TRS) communications assistants for persons who are deaf, hard of hearing, or deafblind, or who have a speech disability, and modifying the definition of business associate to exclude TRS providers.
- Relieve covered entities of the minimum necessary requirement for uses by, disclosures to, or requests by, a health plan or covered health care provider for care coordination and case management activities with respect to an individual, regardless of whether such activities constitute treatment or health care operations.
- Clarifying the scope of covered entities’ abilities to disclose PHI to social services agencies, community-based organizations, home and community based service (HCBS) providers, and other similar third parties that provide health-related services, to facilitate coordination of care and case management for individuals.
- Replacing the privacy standard that permits covered entities to make certain uses and disclosures of PHI based on their “professional judgment” with a standard permitting such uses or disclosures based on a covered entity’s good faith belief that the use or disclosure is in the best interests of the individual. The proposed standard is more permissive in that it would presume a covered entity’s good faith, but this presumption could be overcome with evidence of bad faith.
- Expanding the ability of covered entities to disclose PHI to avert a threat to health or safety when a harm is “serious and reasonably foreseeable,” instead of the current stricter standard which requires a “serious and imminent” threat to health or safety.
- Eliminating the requirement to obtain an individual’s written acknowledgment of receipt of a direct treatment provider’s Notice of Privacy Practices (NPP).
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