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This notice describes how medical information about you may be used and disclosed and how you can get access to this information. Please review carefully.
Your privacy and comfort are incredibly important to us. We promise to protect your personal medical information – known as your Protected Health Information (PHI) – and are required by law to do so.
Your PHI is your detailed personal health information (including demographic data) that relates to:
Your PHI relates to any information that identifies you or for which there is a reasonable basis to believe it can be used to identify you. Individually identifiable health information includes many common identifiers, including your name, address, birth date, Social Security Number, etc.
This Notice describes how we may use your PHI within Valleywise Health and how we may disclose it to others outside of Valleywise Health. This notice also describes the rights you have concerning your own PHI. Please review it carefully and feel free to let us know if you have questions.
This Notice applies to everyone who works or provides services at Valleywise Health (including Roosevelt Campus- Hospital, the Roosevelt Campus-Behavioral Health Annex, Desert Vista, the Health Centers, and the Roosevelt Campus- Health Center), District Medical Group (DMG), Complete Comfort Care, and all Valleywise Health personnel, volunteers, students, contracted physicians and trainees.
The Notice also applies to Valleywise Health and DMG physicians, physician assistants, therapists, emergency service providers, medical transportation companies, medical equipment suppliers, and other health care providers not employed by Valleywise Health, unless these other health care providers give you their own notice that describes how they will protect your PHI.
This Notice does not apply to patients who are incarcerated (currently in a jail or prison).
We may share your PHI with other health care providers for the purposes of their treatment, payment, and health care operations. This arrangement is only for sharing information and not for any other purpose. Any time we have to share part of your PHI, please know that it is ultimately done in order to provide you and our other patients with better care.
Download our notice of Privacy Practice in both English and Spanish below.
We may use your PHI to get special medical services and supplies that you may require. We may also disclose your PHI to other professionals who might need that information to treat you, such as doctors, physician assistants, nurses, medical and nursing students, technicians, therapists, emergency service and medical transportation providers, medical equipment providers, and other health care facilities involved in your care. For example, we will allow your physician to have access to your PHI to assist in your treatment at the hospital and for follow-up care.
We also may use your PHI to contact you to remind you of an upcoming appointment, to inform you about possible treatment options or alternatives, or to tell you about health-related services available to you.
We may need to use and disclose your PHI in order to get paid for the medical services and supplies we provide to you. For example, your health plan or health insurance company may ask to see parts of your PHI before they will pay us for your treatment.
We may use and disclose your PHI if it is absolutely necessary to help improve the quality of care we provide to patients or to operate the hospital. We may use your PHI to conduct quality improvement activities, to obtain audit, accounting or legal services, or to conduct business management and planning. For example, we may look at your PHI to evaluate whether Valleywise Health personnel, your doctors or other health care professionals did a good job.
We may contact you to ask for your help with different fundraising campaigns; however, please let us know if you’d rather not be contacted during fundraising campaigns, and we will respect your wishes. If you tell us in writing that you do not want to receive such communications, we will not use or disclose your PHI for these purposes.
We may disclose your PHI to a family member or friend who is involved in your medical care, or to someone who helps to pay for your care. We also may disclose your PHI to disaster relief organizations in order to help locate a family member or friend in a disaster. If you do not want Valleywise Health to disclose your PHI to family members or others who will visit you, please tell the registration staff and mark the appropriate box on the form given to you during registration.
In order to help family members and other visitors locate you while you are an inpatient, we maintain a patient directory. This directory includes your name, room number and your general condition (such as fair, stable, or critical). We will disclose this information to someone who asks for you by name. The patient directory also includes your religious affiliation (if any). We will disclose this information only to clergy members.
Our behavioral health facilities do not maintain a patient directory.
If you do not want to be included in the patient directory, or you don’t want your religious affiliation information given to the clergy, please tell the registration staff and mark the appropriate box on the form given to you during registration.
We may use or disclose your PHI for research projects, such as studying the effectiveness of a treatment you received. These research projects must go through a special process that protects the confidentiality of your PHI.
We also may report your PHI for public health purposes. For instance, we are required to report births, deaths, and infectious (contagious) diseases to the State of Arizona. We also may need to report patient problems with medications or medical products to the FDA, or notify patients of recalls of products they are using.
We may disclose your PHI for public safety purposes in limited circumstances or to law enforcement officials in response to a search warrant or a grand jury subpoena. We also may disclose your PHI to help law enforcement officials identify or locate a person, to prosecute a crime of violence, to report deaths that may have resulted from criminal conduct, or to report criminal conduct within Valleywise Health.
We also may disclose your PHI to law enforcement officials and others to prevent a serious threat of health or safety.
We may disclose your PHI to a government agency that oversees us or our personnel, such as the Arizona Department of Health Services, the federal and state agencies that oversee Medicare and Medicaid, the Board of Medical Examiners or the Board of Nursing. These agencies may request your PHI to make sure we are in compliance with state and federal laws.
We may disclose information concerning deceased patients to coroners, medical examiners, and funeral directors to help them carry out their duties.
We may also disclose medical information to organizations that handle organ, eye or tissue donation or transplantation.
If you are a member of the armed forces, we may release your PHI as required by military command authorities or to the Department of Veterans Affairs. Valleywise Health may also disclose your PHI to federal officials for intelligence and national security purposes or for Presidential Protective Services.
Valleywise Health may disclose your PHI if we are ordered to do so by a court or if a subpoena (a legal document ordering someone to attend court) or search warrant is served. Most of the time, you will be informed of this disclosure in advance so that you will have a chance to object to sharing your PHI.
Certain types of PHI have additional protection under state and federal law. For instance, PHI about communicable (infectious/contagious) disease and HIV/AIDS, drug and alcohol abuse treatment, genetic testing, and evaluation and treatment for a serious mental illness is treated differently than other types of PHI. For those types of information, we are usually required to get your permission before disclosing your PHI to others.
If we wish to use or disclose your PHI for a purpose that is not discussed in this Notice, we will always seek your permission. If you give your permission, you may take back that permission any time, unless we have already relied on your permission to use or disclose information. If you would ever like to revoke your permission, please notify the Medical Records Department in writing (contact information is at the end of this Notice).
We will obtain your written authorization to use and disclose your PHI for these specific purposes:
We will not use or disclose your PHI for marketing purposes without your authorization. Additionally, if we were to receive remuneration (money) from a third party in connection with our promotion of its product or service to you, then we will obtain your written authorization before we can use or disclose your PHI. We are not required to obtain your authorization before discussing our health-related products or services that are available for your health care treatment, case management or care coordination, or to direct or recommend alternative treatments, therapies, providers, or settings of care, providing face-to-face discussions and offering samples or promotional gifts of nominal (very small) value.
Psychotherapy notes are notes that are written by a mental health professional that document the conversations during a private counseling session or in-group or joint therapy. Many uses and disclosures of psychotherapy notes require your authorization.
We will obtain your authorization for any disclosure of your PHI that would result in us directly or indirectly receiving remuneration (a small amount of money) in exchange for the information.
