Notice of Privacy Practices
This notice describes how medical information about you may be used and disclosed and how you can get access to this information. Please review it carefully.
Greater Good Health (“GGH”, “we”, “us” or “our”) is committed to protecting the confidentiality of its patients’ health information. This Notice of Privacy Practices (“Notice”) describes how we may use and disclose your health information, your rights concerning your health information, and our responsibilities. This Notice is provided to you pursuant to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 and its implementing regulations (“HIPAA”).
Your Rights
When it comes to your health information, you have certain rights. This section explains your rights and some of our responsibilities to help you. You have the right to: Get an electronic or paper copy of your medical record- You can ask to see or get an electronic or paper copy of your medical record and other health information we have about you. Ask us how to do this. Our contact information for requesting copies of your health information can be found at the end of this Notice.
- We will provide a copy or a summary of your health information, usually within 30 days of your request. We may charge a reasonable, cost-based fee.
- You can ask us to correct health information about you that you think is incorrect or incomplete. Ask us how to do this.
- We may say “no” to your request, but we’ll tell you why in writing within 60 days.
- You can ask us to contact you in a specific way about your medical information (for example, home or office phone) or to send your medical information to a different address.
- We will say, “yes” to all reasonable requests.
- You can ask us not to use or share certain health information for treatment, payment, or our operations. We are not required to agree to your request, and we may say “no” if it would affect your care.
- If you pay for a service or healthcare item out-of-pocket in full, you can ask us not to share that information for the purpose of payment or our operations with your health insurer. We will say “yes” unless a law requires us to share that information.
- You can ask for a list (accounting) of the times we’ve shared (disclosed) your health information, for up to six years prior to the date you ask, who we shared it with, and why.
- We will include all the disclosures except for those about treatment, payment, and healthcare operations, and certain other disclosures (such as any you asked us to make). We’ll provide one accounting a year for free but will charge a reasonable, cost-based fee if you ask for another one within 12 months.
Health Information Exchange (HIE) Opt-Out
GGH endorses, supports, and participates in Big Sky Care Connect (“BSCC”) and other state specific HIEs as a means to improve the quality of your health and healthcare experience. In addition, GGH also participates in the National Health Information Exchange through athenahealth which is a Carequality Implementer. The HIEs provide us with a way to securely and efficiently share patients’ clinical information electronically with other physicians and healthcare providers that participate in these HIE networks. Using these HIEs helps your healthcare providers to more effectively share information and provide you with better care. The HIEs also enable access for emergency medical personnel and other providers who are treating you to have immediate access to your medical data that may be critical for your care. Making your health information available to your healthcare providers through the HIEs can also help reduce your costs in a variety of ways, such as eliminating unnecessary duplication of tests and procedures. Opt-out methods: You may choose to opt-out of participation in the HIEs by contacting our Compliance Department through a request for restriction on disclosure. Opting out means your data will still be shared with HIE, but your health data will not be viewable in the state specific system. Opting out of the HIE is an “all-or-nothing” choice, because the state specific HIE cannot block access to some types of medical information while at the same time permit access to other medical information. Opting out of state specific HIE may limit your health care providers’ ability to provide the most effective care for you. Carequality: You can opt out of Carequality even if your provider uses athenahealth, but you typically have to ask your GGH provider’s office to change your preference in their system, as it’s often enabled by default to share data across the national network. Opting out stops your data from being shared with other networks, but it also means your providers might miss crucial history in emergencies, so it’s a trade-off between privacy and comprehensive care. Montana State: Big Sky Care Connect (BSCC) provides a “global” HIE-level opt-out option. The records continue to be shared but are placed “behind glass” and are inaccessible. Patients can exercise global, HIE-level opt-out at any time.- Patients can also opt back in at any time using the same methods. Patient to complete the opt-out form available on BSCC’s website at https://www.mtbscc.org/bscc-patients and mail it to BSCC Opt-out Team 2021 11th Avenue, Suite 11 Helena, MT 59601
- Complete Opt-out Form online and submit it directly on BSCC’s website: https://www.mtbscc.org/opt-out
- You can file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights by sending a letter to 200 Independence Avenue, S.W., Washington, D.C. 20201, by calling 877-696-6775, or visiting hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/complaints/
- We will not retaliate against you for filing a complaint.
Your Choices
For certain health information, you can tell us your choices about what we share. If you have a clear preference for how we share your information in the situations described below, contact us. Tell us what you want us to do, and we will follow your instructions. In these cases, you have both the right and choice to tell us to:- Share information with your family, close friends, or others involved in your care
- Share information in a disaster relief situation
- Include your information in a hospital directory
- Marketing purposes
- Sale of your protected health information
- Most sharing of psychotherapy notes
- We may contact you for fundraising efforts, but you can tell us not to contact you again. We will honor your request to not contact you again.
Our Uses and Disclosures of Your PHI
Any use or disclosure of your PHI for treatment, payment, or health care operations must be consistent with this Notice of Privacy Practices. A covered entity is required to provide the individual with adequate notice of its privacy practices, including the uses or disclosures the covered entity may make of the individual’s information and the individual’s rights with respect to that information. We typically use or share your health information in the following ways:- Treatment: We can use your health information and share it with other professionals who are treating you. Example: A doctor treating you for an injury asks another doctor about your overall health condition.
- Run our organization: We can use and share your health information to run our practice, improve your care, and contact you when necessary. Example: We use health information about you to manage your treatment and services.
- Bill for your services: We can use and share your health information to bill and get payment from health plans or other entities. Example: We give information about you to your health insurance plan so it will pay for your services.
- Preventing disease
- Helping with product recalls
- Reporting adverse reactions to medications
- Reporting suspected abuse, neglect, or domestic violence
- Preventing or reducing a serious threat to anyone’s health or safety
- For workers’ compensation claims
- For law enforcement purposes or with a law enforcement official
- With health oversight agencies for activities authorized by law
- For special government functions such as military, national security, and presidential protective services
Our Responsibilities
- We are required by law to maintain the privacy and security of your protected health information.
- We will let you know promptly if a breach occurs that may have compromised the privacy or security of your information.
- We must follow the duties and privacy practices described in this notice and give you a copy of it.
- We will not use or share your information other than as described here unless you tell us we can in writing. If you tell us we can, you may change your mind at any time. Let us know in writing if you change your mind.
Patient Portal and Other Patient Electronic Correspondence
Greater Good Health may use and disclose your PHI through various secure patient portals that allow you to view, download and transmit certain medical and billing information and communicate with certain health care providers in a secure manner through the portal. We do not sell or share any of your PHI that is located within the secure patient portal which requires a login and password. General Greater Good Health Website Greater Good Health respects your privacy and wants you to be familiar with how the use of the website may result in certain information being collected in order to improve your customer experience and continue to improve the website functionality. Automatic Information Collection and Use We and our service providers may collect certain information automatically as you navigate around the website. Particular information is collected by your browser, such as your operating system name and version, Internet browser type, computer type (Windows or Mac), screen resolution, and version. We may collect similar information, such as your device type and unique device identifier, if you access the webpage through a mobile device and to understand how you use our website. We use this information to ensure that the website functions properly and gives you the best customer experience. Cookies Cookies are pieces of information stored directly on the computer you are using. Cookies allow us to collect information such as browser type, time spend on the website pages visited and language preferences. We and our service providers use the information for security purposes, to facilitate navigation, display information more effectively, and to personalize your experience while using the website. We also use cookies to recognize your computer or device, which makes your use of the website easier. In addition, we use cookies to gather statistical information about website usage in order to continually improve its functionality, understand how individuals use it, and to assist us with resolving questions about it. You may refuse to accept these cookies by following your browser’s instructions, but if you do not accept them, you may experience some inconvenience in your use of our website. To learn more about cookies, visit https://allaboutcookies.org Web Based Tracking Technologies Pixel tags, web beacons and other web-based technologies may be used in connection with some of our web pages and HTML-formatted e-mail messages to track the actions of users and email recipients, measure the success of our marketing campaigns, and compile statistics about the Service usage. At times, we might use third-party advertising companies to send advertisements regarding goods and services that may be of interest to you when you access and use our website. We use information based on your access to and use of our website. These third parties, such as Google or Meta, may use unique cookies, web beacons, pixels, and other technologies to collect or receive information from the web and other places on the Internet to develop information to enable us to create targeted advertisement and measure the effects of our ads. Greater Good Health wants visibility into basic website use data. Google Analytics may collect information such as:- Device and browser: The type of device and browser used to access the site
- Location: Whether the user is coming from a paid search on a specific platform
- User behavior: What actions the user takes on the site, such as clicks and scrolls
- Time of visit: When the user visits the site or opens an email
- IP address: The user’s IP address
- Referring URL: The URL that led the user to the site
- Page views: How many pages the user views on the site
Opting out of Web Based Tracking Technology
For more information on these practices, and to learn how to opt out of it in your desktop and mobile browsers on the device that you are using visit: https://optout.aboutads.info/#/ If you would like to opt-out from the use of your information by Google analytics, you may use the Google Analytics opt out browser add-on designed for this purpose, which is available here: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout. IP Address Your computer IP address is a number that is automatically assigned to your computer by your Internet Service Provider. An IP address is identified anad logged automatically in our server log files whenever a user visits the website, along with the time of the visit and the pages visited. Collecting IP addresses is common practice and is done automatically by many online services. We use IP addresses for purposes of ensuring a good customer experience, such as calculating website usage levels, diagnosing server problems, and administering the site. We may also derive your approximate location from your IP address. Do Not Track The website does not take any action when it receives a Do Not Track request. Do Not Track is a privacy preference that you can set your browser to indicate that you do not want certain information about your webpage visits collected across websites when you have not interacted with that service on the page. For information on how to activate Do Not Track, visit www.donottrack.us.State Privacy Laws
We are committed to respecting your privacy rights and complying with applicable state privacy laws in the US. Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights and choices regarding your personal information under the local laws. The following state laws have gone into effect in recent years:- California. The California Privacy Rights Act of 2020 (CPRA), and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which grants California residents the right to access, delete, correct, and opt out of the sale or sharing of their personal information, as well as the right to limit the use of their sensitive personal information and the right to non-discrimination for exercising their privacy rights.
- Colorado. The Colorado Privacy Act (CPA), which grants Colorado residents the right to access, delete, correct, and opt out of the processing of their personal information for targeted advertising, sale, or certain other purposes, as well as the right to data portability and the right to non-discrimination for exercising their privacy rights.
- Connecticut. The Connecticut Data Privacy Act (CDPA), which grants Connecticut residents the right to access, delete, correct, and opt out of the sale or sharing of their personal information, as well as the right to data portability and the right to non-discrimination for exercising their privacy rights.
- Utah. The Utah Consumer Privacy Act (UCPA), which grants Utah residents the right to access, delete, correct, and opt out of the processing of their personal information for targeted advertising, sale, or certain other purposes, as well as the right to data portability and the right to non-discrimination for exercising their privacy rights.
- Virginia. The Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act (VCDPA), which grants Virginia residents the right to access, delete, correct, and opt out of the processing of their personal information for targeted advertising, sale, or profiling, as well as the right to data portability and the right to non-discrimination for exercising their privacy rights.
- Oregon. Our company is fully committed to complying with the laws of Oregon. This includes the Oregon Consumer Privacy Act effective July 2024, which grants consumers the right to access, correct, delete, opt out of processing for profiling/targeted advertising purposes, right to portability, to opt-out of sales, opt in for sensitive data processing and right against automated decision making.
- Texas. Our company is fully committed to complying with the laws of Texas. This includes the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act effective July 2024, which grants consumers the right to access, correct, delete, opt out of processing for profiling/targeted advertising purposes, right to portability, to opt-out of sales, opt in for sensitive data processing and right against automated decision making.