HIPAA/Privacy
Policy
What is HIPAA all about?
The final rule adopting HIPAA standards
for security was published in the Federal Register on
February 20, 2003. This final rule specifies a series
of administrative, technical, and physical security procedures
for covered entities to use to assure the confidentiality
of electronic protected health information. To ensure
compliance with the security provisions, Proactiv Wellness
Centers, PLC (PWC) elected to acquire and implement a
HIPAA-complaint Electronic Medical Records (EMR) system
in April, 2006. This system, when fully implemented, allows
us to be 100% paperless. In being HIPAA compliant, the
EMR provider has implemented rigorous security standards
that include biometric-enabled entry to the facility,
secure processing over SSL (Secure Socket Layer - same
as ecommerce transactions) and other physical and electronic
protections.
The privacy provisions of HIPAA apply to
health information created or maintained by health care
providers who engage in certain electronic transactions,
health plans, and health care clearinghouses. This part
of the provisions provides requirements for how we can
and can not use the information that is in your health
record, and gives you certain rights to limit disclosures
in certain situations. The privacy provisions also require
that we notify you of our specific privacy policies. Click
this link to access our current Notice of Privacy Practices.
Notwithstanding the HIPAA requirements, we take security
and privacy very seriously and take every effort to safeguard
your personal health information and the financial information
that you trust us with when making payments.
Using email safely
As such, we are concerned about the use
of standard email for sensitive information, called "protected
health information" (PHI) in the HIPAA provisions. For
that reason, we have required that patients fax their
credit card authorization forms and health history forms
to us. Regarding standard email, while it is generally
considered a reasonably secure method of communication,
it is pretty broadly known that standard email is not
totally secure from end to end, and as such, the information
could be intercepted or tampered with. But just like financial
transactions over the internet can be protected by encrypting
the transaction and providing secure transportation of
the transaction over SSL, email can be secured in the
same way. In fact, we have contracted with a provider
to do exactly that and are now pleased to offer free
secure email to our patients. We will always use it
for outgoing email that contains PHI or personal financial
information. For example, the invoices that we provide
will only be provided through secure email going foward
since they contain PHI and personal identifying information
including your social security number. It is up to you
to use your judgment for sending email to us. If it does
not contain sensitive information, you can continue to
use standard email or if in doubt, you can use our new
secure portal to send secure email to us.
When a secure email is initiated by us,
you will receive a notice in your registered email inbox
that simply indicates that you have received a secure
email message from us. This email provides a link to the
secure "escrow" portal that allows you to access the message.
To access a secure message you will need two pieces of
authentication. First, you will need the "key" that is
included in the email. The easiest thing to do is to use
copy and paste to get it from your inbox paste it to the
secure portal. In addition to the "key" you need a secret
word from us. The secret word was previously provided
and can be obtained by contacting our Privacy Official
at (703) 822-5003 Ext 704. Enter the secret word when
prompted in addition to the key and you will be able to
access the secure email. In addition to retrieving messages,
you can reply to any messages that we have sent from this
portal.
If you want to initiate a secure email
to us, go to http://www.proactivesecureportal.com
and register yourself for secure email sending using
our secure send portal. To send from the secure
send portal, you must use our new secure email addresses.
For Dr. Lawson, the email address is drlawson@proactivesecurept.com
and for our Business Administrator and Privacy Official,
Andre Etherly, the email address is andre@proactivesecurept.com.
From the secure send portal, it will only accept one of
these email addresses so it is not possible to send it
to the wrong place. Thus, whether you reply to one of
our secure emails to you or initiate your own from the
secure send portal, your message is encrypted and sent
securely over SSL to our inbox. Of course, you can use
the secure send portal to send credit card authorization
forms for tests, maintenance programs and other services
in addition to other PHI.
HIPAA/Privacy Documents
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