Your Medical Record
Each time you visit a hospital, physician, or healthcare provider, a record of your visit is made. This record contains your symptoms, examination and test results, diagnosis treatments and a plan for future care of treatment. Medical records are considered ‘protected healthcare information’ or PHI.
1. Uses and Disclosures of Protected Healthcare Information
Cheng Medical Corporation is required to protect the privacy of your medical/health information. We respect the privacy and confidentiality of your protected healthcare information.
PHI (Protected Healthcare Information – your medical record) may be used and released by your physician or other medical practitioner and by our office staff and others outside of our office who are involved in your care and treatment:
- For the purpose of providing quality health care services to you
- For the purpose of paying your health care bills
- To support the normal business operations of the physician’s practices
- To participate with government compliance activities to prevent fraud and abuse.
You may at any time request a listing of our business associates and normal business activities which may require the disclosure of your PHI.
- We will make all reasonable efforts to communicate your rights in a language you understand.
- We will only release information to someone other than you, if you have named another individual to us as an authorized party to receive your PHI.
- In the event of an emergency, we will make all reasonable efforts to secure consent from you prior to treatment.
- If you are unable to provide consent, we will only release information from your medical record that is minimally necessary for someone to provide care to you safely and we will notify you of that released medical record information when it is more appropriate.
2. Treatment
We may disclose your PHI to other third parties, including physicians, specialists, laboratory technicians, and hospital personnel in order to provide, manage, and or/coordinate your health care and other related services.
3. Payment
Your PHI will be used as needed to obtain payment for your health care services which includes allowing your health insurance company to review your PHI for medical necessity.
4. Healthcare and Business Operations
We may use or disclose your PHI in order to:
- Perform quality assessment activities
- Conduct employee review activities
- Assist in the training of medical students
- Complete government compliance activities and internal clinical studies
- Provide you with educational information about treatment alternatives or other health-related information
- Send you information about our organization that we believe will be useful to you. You may contact us to request that these materials not be sent to you.
5. Federal, State, and Local Law Enforcement
We may use or release your PHI as required for law enforcement purposes. These law enforcement purposes include:
- Legal processes and otherwise as required by law
- Limited information pertaining to victims of a crime
- Suspicion that death has occurred as a result of criminal conduct
- In the event that a crime occurs on the premises of the practice or a Medical emergency and it is likely that a crime has occurred (not on the premises)
- Judicial or administrative proceedings
- In response to an order of a
