Effective January 1, 2009
HIPAA NOTICE OF PRIVACY PRACTICES FOR PERSONAL HEALTH INFORMATION
OUR LISTED PROVIDERS MAY USE OR DISCLOSE YOUR MEDICAL INFORMATION FOR THE FOLLOWING PURPOSES:
For Treatment: Our listed providers may use and disclose medical information about you, including hearing test findings, in order to ensure that you receive proper medical treatment. To order your hearing aid our listed providers must disclose such information to the manufacturer of your device. Our listed providers may also disclose your health information to another physician or health care provider involved in your care.
For Payment: Our listed providers may use and disclose medical information about you so that they can obtain payment for the treatment and services that they provide to you from you, an insurance company or another third party if applicable.
For Health Care Operations: Our listed providers may use and disclose medical information about you for their health care operations. Health care operations are activities that are necessary to run their offices, maintain licenses, and to make sure that their patients receive quality care, services and products. For example, they may use your medical information to review their treatment of you and the services they provided and to evaluate the performance of their staff in caring for you.
Appointment Reminders/Order Status: Our listed providers may contact you or your personal representative with a reminder postcard, email or telephone message that it is time for you to call their office and schedule an appointment. They may also contact you by telephone or email with regard to the status of your hearing aid, ear mold, repair or assistive device order.
Individuals Involved in Your Care or Payment for Your Care: Our listed providers may discuss your medical care with family members or close personal friends who are involved in your medical care or payment for that care. You have the right to restrict or refuse any of these uses or disclosures.
To Avert a Serious Threat to Health or Safety: Our listed providers may use and disclose medical information about you when necessary to prevent a serious threat to your health and safety or the health and safety of the public or another person. Disclosure would only be to someone able to help prevent the threatened harm.
Workers' Compensation: Our listed providers may release medical information about you for workers' compensation or similar programs that provide benefits for work related injuries or illness as required or permitted by law if you are injured at work.
Health Oversight Activities: Our listed providers may disclose your medical information to a health oversight agency such as licensing boards for activities authorized by law.
Lawsuits and Disputes: Our listed providers may disclose medical information about you in response to a court or administrative order, a subpoena, discovery request or other lawful process, but only if efforts have been made to tell you about the request or to obtain an order protecting the information requested.
As Required By Law: Our listed providers will disclose medical information about you when required to do so by federal, state or local law.
Law Enforcement: Under certain circumstances, our listed providers may release medical information about you if asked to do so by a law enforcement official.
Government Purposes: Our listed providers may release your medical information under limited circumstances if you are a member of the armed forces or foreign military personnel, or for intelligence, counterintelligence and other national security activities authorized by law.
Incidental Uses and Disclosures: Our listed providers may use or disclose your medical information if it is a by product of any of the uses or disclosures described above and it could not be reasonably prevented.
Unidentifiable Information: Our listed providers may use or disclose certain information that does not directly identify you for research, public health or health care operations if the recipient of that information agrees to protect the information.
DISCLOSURES WITH YOUR AUTHORIZATION
Our listed providers must obtain your authorization to use or disclose health information in those situations not otherwise described in this Notice. If you do authorize them to use or disclose your medical information, you have the right to revoke that authorization at anytime.
YOUR RIGHTS IN CONNECTION WITH YOUR MEDICAL INFORMATION
You have the following rights in connection with the medical information they maintain about you:
Right to Inspect and Copy: You have the right to inspect and copy your medical information that is in our listed providers possession. You may not, however, have access to information that is put together for use in a civil, criminal or administrative proceeding. To inspect or copy your medical information, you must submit your request in writing to their corporate office. If you request a copy of the information, they may charge a fee for the costs of copying, mailing or other supplies associated with your request. They may deny your request to inspect or copy your health information in certain very limited circumstances. If you are denied access to your medical information, you may be able to request that the denial be reviewed.
Right to Request Amendment: If you feel that your medical information is incorrect or incomplete, you may ask them to amend that information. You have the right to request an amendment for as long as the information is kept by or for their office. To request an amendment, your request must be made in writing and submitted to their corporate office. You must explain why you believe that the medical information is incorrect or incomplete. If they deny your request, you have a right to give them a short statement to be placed with you medical information or to have them include your request for amendment with your medical information.
Right to an Accounting of Disclosures: You have the right to request disclosures of your medical information, which they are required to provide to you. Our listed providers are not required to include on that, disclosures to carry out your treatment, payment for your care, and other health care operations and certain other disclosures. To request this list or accounting of disclosures, you must submit your request in writing to their corporate office. Your request must state a time period covered by your request. That time period may not be longer than six years and may not include dates before June 1, 2005. Your request should indicate in what form you want the list (for example on paper or electronically). The first list you request within a 12 month period will be free. For additional lists, they may charge you for the costs of providing the list. They will notify you of the cost involved and you may choose to withdraw or modify your request at that time before any costs are incurred.
Right to Request Additional Privacy Protections: You have the right to request additional restrictions from those detailed in this notice. Your request must be submitted in writing to their corporate office. Our listed providers are not required, however, to agree to your request.
Right to Request Confidential Communication: You have the right to request that our listed providers communicate with you about medical matters in a certain way or at a certain location. Your request must be specific as to how or where you wish to be contacted. To request confidential communications, you must make your request in writing to their corporate office. We will not ask you the reason for your request, and they will accommodate all reasonable requests.
Right to a Paper Copy of this Notice: You may ask our listed providers to give you a copy of thier HIPAA Policy at any time by asking for it in person or in writing. Even if you have agreed to receive this notice electronically, you are still entitled to a paper copy. You may email us your request and we will send you a copy within 30 days.
COMPLAINTS
If you believe your privacy rights have been violated; you may file a complaint with the office we sent you to or with the Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services. To contact Advice on Hearing Aids, please send us an email at: service@adviceonhearingaids.com
Complaints or requests for information shall be the object of an investigation or response within 30 business days. If the complaint is justified, our clinics will take the appropriate measures to address the complaint, including access to the requested information, by proceeding with rectification or, as the case may be, by amending its Policy and practices.
If you have any questions about this notice, please contact the office we sent you to, or you can write to us at the email address above.
WE MAY MAKE CHANGES TO THIS NOTICE IN THE FUTURE, AND ANY OF THE TERMS OF THIS NOTICE THAT ARE CHANGED WILL APPLY TO ALL OF OUR MEDICAL INFORMATION. IF WE CHANGE OUR NOTICE, YOU MAY OBTAIN A COPY OF THE REVISED NOTICE BY NOTIFYING US IN WRITING BY EMAIL TO THE ABOVE ADDRESS.
PRIVACY POLICY CONCERNING NON-MEDICAL PERSONAL INFORMATION:
Personal Information: We do not sell, trade or give away your personal information to anyone.
Disclosure to Third Parties: We do not disclose your personal information to third parties, unless one of the following limited exceptions applies.
1. Licenced Hearing Clinics in your area. If you submit your information to us, we may inform the local clinic in your area that you were looking for information. Once they receive your information they are legally bound by the HIPAA privacy notice as outlined above.
2. Statistic, Search Engine Marketing & Optimization Services. We may disclose some of your personal information to other companies in the normal course of business that help us record visitors so we can better serve your needs.
3. Legal Obligations. We may disclose or report your personal information when we believe, in good faith, that the disclosure is required or permitted under law, for example, to cooperate with regulators or law enforcement authorities or to resolve consumer disputes.
Outside of these exceptions, we will not share your personal information with third parties. Please note that any question you may pose to our network professionals or any discussions posted in the hearing aid forum are visible for all to see. For your own safety, we advise not to disclose sensitive personal information like credit card numbers or social security numbers.
Registering With Us: We begin collecting personal information from you when you register with us. You may register with us through our website by entering your email address and, if you are creating an account, choosing your password. Under our current process, you must create an account before posting in our forums, asking questions to professionals, leaving a review, or any other interactive product offered on our website.
Email this Page: Advice on Hearing Aids has an “Email this Page” service that allows you to inform a friend about products, papers, or companies that you've found on our site. In this process you enter the e-mail address of your friend and possibly your own e-mail address, together with a short message. We will include certain personal information from you, such as your name, into the e-mail sent to be sent to your friend. After we send your email, we will not retain your friend's email address or send further emails to your friend unless your friend creates an account with us.
Other Notices: We gather anonymous information about you for our internal purposes, and we may share this anonymous information with third parties. Anonymous information is any information that does not personally identify you, including aggregate demographic information such as the number of visitors to our website from a particular state. We use anonymous information primarily for marketing purposes and to improve the services we offer you. This information in no way specifically identifies you or any of your personal information.
We may use "Cookies," "Clear Gifs," "Internet Protocol" addresses and other monitoring technologies to gather anonymous information. For a more detailed discussion on cookies and clear gifs, please see below. We protect the confidentiality and security of your personal information. We continue to evaluate our efforts to protect your personal information and make every effort to keep your personal information accurate and up to date. If we are going to use your personal information in a manner different from that stated at the time of collection, we will notify you via email. You will have a choice as to whether or not we use your personal information in this different manner. In addition, if we make any material changes to our information privacy practices that do not affect the personal information already stored in our database, we will post a prominent notice in the privacy portion of our website notifying users of the change.
You may opt out of receiving satisfaction surveys, newsletters, and/or information on additional products and services from us. We may contact you to survey your satisfaction of our service and/or to inform you of additional products and services. Please note that you may still receive communications from us regarding hearing aids, clinics, or specials even if you opt out of receiving our surveys and/or notices of additional products and services.
If you have any questions, please email us at service@adviceonhearingaids.com
This privacy policy applies to this Advice on Hearing Aids website, and may not apply to other websites that are owned and/or operated by Advice on Hearing Aids.
The information privacy practices described in this privacy policy apply only to applications initiated on this website. Accordingly, all of the personal information you submit to us after initiating an application on this website shall be governed by this privacy policy. Additionally, all of the anonymous information collected from this website shall be governed by this privacy policy.
"Cookies" and "Clear Gifs": "Cookies" are small files that are stored by your web browser to help a particular system recognize you and the pages you visited in a website. Our website uses cookies to make your online experience more convenient. For example, we may use a cookie to store your account information between sessions and to maintain information about the quotes you've requested during your session. Additionally, we may use data from cookies for a variety of internal purposes, such as studying how users navigate our website. Most browsers automatically accept cookies, but if you prefer, you can set yours to refuse cookies.
"Clear gifs" are tiny graphics with a unique identifier, similar in function to cookies, that are used to track the online movements of website users. The main difference between the two is that clear gifs are invisible on the page and are much smaller than cookies. We do not collect any personal information from clear gifs. Further, no information we collect from clear gifs can be linked back to your personal information.
We use third party web analytics services to track and analyze anonymous usage and volume statistical information from visitors to help us administer our website, improve our website's performance and to report website traffic. These web analytics services use cookies, clear gifs and other web monitoring technologies to help track visitor behavior on our behalf.
Browsers and Internet Security: Any time you enter or provide personal information in our website, we encrypt it using Secure Socket Layer ("SSL") technology. SSL protects information as it crosses the Internet. To support this technology, you need an SSL-capable browser. Advice on Hearing Aids recommends using a strong encryption, 128-bit browser such as Microsoft's Internet Explorer 4.01 or higher or Netscape Navigator 4.06 or higher.
You can tell if you are visiting a secure area within a website by looking at the symbol on the bottom of your browser screen. If you are using Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator, you will see either a lock or a key. When the padlock is in the locked position, your session connection is taking place via a secure server.
If you need a strong encryption browser, you can go to the Microsoft website or the Netscape website to download the latest Internet Explorer or Navigator browser. We do not recommend the use of beta browser versions.
Your Password and Other Security Issues: The password you enter on our website is your private entry key. You should never share it with anyone. Your password must be between 6-10 digits and/or letters long. If you forget your password, we can send your password through email, provided that you gave us your email address as your user ID when you created an account on our website.
Security Risk of Using Non-Approved Automated Software Applications: For security reasons to guard the safety of your data, access to this website is limited to SSL-capable browsers such as Microsoft's Internet Explorer 4.01 or higher or Netscape Navigator 4.06 or higher. Under no circumstance should you use any software, program, application or any other device to access or log-in to the Advice on Hearing Aids website, or to automate the process of obtaining, downloading, transferring or transmitting any content to or from our computer systems, website or proprietary software.
Links to Other Websites: Our website contains links to other websites. Please note that when you click on one of these links you are "clicking" to another website. Advice on Hearing Aids is not responsible for the information privacy practices or the content of such websites. We encourage you to read the privacy policies of these linked websites as their information privacy practices may differ from ours.
Last Updated: January 1, 2009