Notice of Privacy Practices

Our legal duty

We are required by law to protect the privacy of your protected health information, to give you this notice describing our privacy practices, and to follow the terms of the notice currently in effect. We are also required to notify you if a breach occurs that compromises the privacy or security of your information.

We reserve the right to change this notice and to make the revised notice effective for information we already hold as well as information we receive in the future. The current notice will always be posted on this website and available in the office.

Uses and disclosures for treatment, payment, and health care operations

Treatment

We use your information to provide and coordinate your care. Within this practice, your therapist and your prescriber work from the same record, which is the point of offering both services here. Outside the practice, we may share information with another provider involved in your care, such as your primary care physician or a pharmacy, or with a hospital if you require a higher level of care.

Payment

We use and disclose your information to bill and collect payment for the care you receive. This includes verifying your benefits, obtaining prior authorization, which for Spravato requires documenting the medications you have previously tried, and submitting claims to your health plan.

Health care operations

We use your information to run the practice: quality review, staff training and supervision, licensing and credentialing, business planning, and audits. Where we use an outside company to help with any of this, we require a written agreement obligating that company to protect your information.

Other uses and disclosures permitted without your authorization

The law permits or requires us to use or disclose your information without your authorization in a limited set of circumstances:

• When required by federal, state, or local law.
• For public health activities, including reporting communicable disease and reporting adverse events involving medications.
• When we are required to report suspected abuse, neglect, or exploitation of a child, an elderly person, or a person with a disability.
• For health oversight activities such as audits, inspections, and licensure investigations.
• In response to a court order, subpoena, or other lawful legal process, subject to the additional protections that apply to mental health records.
• To law enforcement in the narrow circumstances the law defines.
• To coroners, medical examiners, and funeral directors as permitted by law.
• To avert a serious and imminent threat to your health or safety or to the health or safety of another person.
• For workers compensation claims as authorized by law.
• For specialized government functions, including certain military and national security purposes.

For appointment reminders and to leave messages, we will use the contact method and level of detail you tell us to use.

Uses that always require your written authorization

Some categories of information receive additional protection and are never disclosed without your specific written permission:

• Psychotherapy notes, meaning the notes a clinician keeps separately to document or analyze a counseling session, other than in the narrow situations the law specifically permits.
• Any use or disclosure for marketing purposes.
• Any sale of your protected health information, which this practice does not do.

You may revoke an authorization in writing at any time. Revoking it stops future disclosures but cannot undo a disclosure already made in reliance on it.

Connecticut law and, where substance use disorder treatment records are involved, 42 CFR Part 2, impose further restrictions on disclosure. Where those rules are stricter than HIPAA, we follow the stricter rule.

Your rights over your record

The right to see and get a copy

You may inspect and obtain a copy of your record, electronically if you prefer and we maintain it that way. We may charge a reasonable, cost-based fee for copies. Access to psychotherapy notes may be limited in the circumstances the law defines.

The right to ask for a correction

If you believe something in your record is wrong or incomplete, you may ask us to amend it. We may deny the request in certain circumstances, and if we do, you may file a statement of disagreement that becomes part of the record.

The right to an accounting of disclosures

You may request a list of certain disclosures we made of your information, other than for treatment, payment, and operations and other than disclosures you authorized.

The right to request restrictions

You may ask us to limit how we use or disclose your information. We are not required to agree to every request, with one exception: if you pay for a service in full and out of pocket, you may direct us not to disclose information about that service to your health plan, and we must honor that.

The right to confidential communications

You may ask us to contact you in a particular way or at a particular address, for example only by cell phone, or only at a specific mailing address. We will accommodate reasonable requests and will not ask you to explain why.

The right to a paper copy of this notice

You may ask for a paper copy at any time, even if you agreed to receive it electronically.

The right to be told about a breach

We will notify you if a breach occurs that compromises the privacy or security of your information.

How to complain

If you believe your privacy rights have been violated, you may file a complaint with our Privacy Officer, or directly with the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights. Complaints to OCR can be filed at hhs.gov/ocr/complaints.

We will not retaliate against you for filing a complaint, and filing one will not affect the care you receive here.

Contact for privacy questions

New Horizon Behavioral Health
Attn: Privacy Officer
10 Princeton St, Ste N
West Hartford, CT 06110

Phone: (860) 838-8799
Email: info@newhorizonbehavioralhealth.com