Introduction

This Notice of Privacy Practices is being provided to you on behalf of Valley Women’s Health located in Utah with respect to women’s health and medical services provided at Valley Women’s Health located in Utah (collectively referred to herein as “We” or “Our). We understand that your medical information is private and confidential. Further, we are required by law to maintain the privacy of “protected health information.” Protected health information includes any individually identifiable information that we obtain from you or others that relates to your past, present or future physical or mental health, the health care you have received, or payment for your health care.

Your Rights

Although your health record is the physical property of Valley Women’s Health, you have the right to:

• request a restriction on certain uses and disclosures of your information as provided by applicable law
• obtain a paper copy of this Notice of Privacy Practices upon request
• inspect and copy your health record as provided for by applicable law
• request an electronic copy of your electronic health record
• request to amend your health record as provided by applicable law
• obtain an accounting of disclosures of your health information as provided by applicable law.
• request communications of your health information by alternative means or at alternative locations
• revoke your authorization to use or disclose health information except to the extent that action has already been taken
• request a restriction of disclosure of your health information to your health insurer for services for which you pay “out of pocket” in full
• transmit copies of your health information to third parties when request by you, in writing

Patient Code of Conduct

Patients, their families, staff and visitors are expected to refrain from unacceptable behaviors that are disruptive or pose a threat to the rights or safety of other patients, visitors and staff in an effort to provide a safe and healthy environment.

For patients, their families, staff and visitors visiting our practice, please consider the following:

• Our practice follows a zero-tolerance policy for aggressive behavior directed by patients against our staff.

The following behaviors are prohibited:

• Intimidating or harassing staff or other patients
• Making threats of violence through phone calls, letters, voicemail, email or other forms of written, verbal or electronic communication
• Physically assaulting or threatening to inflict bodily harm
• Making verbal threats to harm another individual or destroy property
• Damaging business equipment or property
• Making menacing or derogatory gestures
• Making racial or cultural slurs or other derogatory remarks

If you are subjected to any of these behaviors or witness inappropriate behavior, please report to any staff member. Violators are subject to removal from the facility and/or discharge from the practice.

If you have any questions about the care or our unhappy with the service received in our office, please contact our patient care advocate so that any clarifications about your care or the services you received can be addressed.

Our Responsibilities

We are required to:

• maintain the privacy of your health information
• provide you with a notice as to our legal duties and privacy practices with respect to information we collect and maintain about you
• abide by the terms of this notice
• notify you if we are unable to agree to a requested restriction
• accommodate reasonable requests you may have to communicate health information by alternative means or at alternative locations
• where required by law, notify you in the event that there has been a breach of your unsecured health information

We reserve the right to change our practices and to make the new provisions effective for all protected health information we maintain. Should our information practices change, we will post the revised Notice of Privacy Practices on our website at valleywomenshealth.com as well as at our offices and provide you with a hard copy upon request.

We will not use or disclose your health information without your authorization, except as described in this notice. We will not sell your health information (unless permitted by law) or use or disclose such information for paid marketing (for which re receive payment from a third party) without your authorization. If we obtain your authorization, you may revoke it at any time, and this revocation will take effect except where we have already relied upon your authorization.

Permitted Uses and Disclosures

We will and disclose use your health information for treatment. For example: information obtained by a nurse, physician or other member of your healthcare team will be recorded in your record and used to determine the course of treatment that should work best for you. Your physician will document in your record his expectations of the members of your healthcare team. Members of your healthcare team will then record the actions they took and their observations. In that way the physician will know how you are responding to treatment.

We will also provide your physician or a subsequent healthcare provider with copies of various reports that should assist him/her in treating you once you’re discharged from this practice.

We will use your health information for payment. For example: A bill may be sent to you or a third party payor, such as an insurance company or health plan, for the purposes of receiving payment for treatment and services that you receive. The information on the bill may contain information that identifies you, your diagnosis, and treatment or supplies used in the course of treatment.

We will use and disclose your health information for our health care operations. For example: Members of the clinical staff, the risk or quality improvement manager, or members of the quality improvement team may use information in your health record to assess the care and outcomes in your case and others like it. This information will then be used in an effort to continually improve the quality and effectiveness of the healthcare and the reproductive medicine service we provide.

We will collect health information on you and your spouse/significant other. For example: Although health information in your medical record belongs to you, it will contain some information pertaining to your spouse/significant other. This is because the treatment of infertility may focus on the couple, rather than the individual. We will share information with either partner, unless you indicate otherwise.

Other Uses or Disclosures of Protected Health Information

Business Associates: There are some services provided at Valley Women’s Health through contacts with business associates. When these services are contracted, we may disclose your health information to our business associate so that they can perform the job we have asked them to do, and bill you or your third party payer for services rendered. So that your health information is protected, however, we require the business associate to appropriately safeguard your information.

Notification: We may use or disclose information to notify or assist in notifying a family member, personal representative, or another person responsible for your care, your location, and general condition.

Communication with Spouse/Family: Health professionals, using their best judgment, may disclose to your spouse, family member, or any other person you identify, health information relevant to that person’s involvement in your care or payment related to your care. We will give you an opportunity to object to these disclosures, and we will not make these disclosures if you object.

Research: We may disclose information to researchers when their research has been approved by an Institutional Review Board that has reviewed the research proposal and established protocols to ensure the privacy of your health information.

Marketing: Where permitted by law, we may contact you to tell you about or recommend possible treatment alternatives or other medical technology and services that may be of interest to you. We may also seek your authorization to contact you with other marketing communications.

Food and Drug Administration (FDA): We may disclose to the FDA health information relative to adverse events with respect to food, supplements, product and product defects or post marketing surveillance information to enable product recalls, repairs or replacement.

Public Health: As required by law, your health information may be used or disclosed for public health activities such as assisting public health authorities or other legal authorities to prevent or control disease, injury, disability or for other health oversight activities.

Law Enforcement: We may disclose health information for law enforcement purposes as required by law, or in response to a valid subpoena. Federal law makes provision for your health information to be released to an appropriate health oversight agency, public health authority or attorney, provided that a workforce member or business associate believes in good faith that we have engaged in unlawful conduct or have otherwise violated professional or clinical standards and are potentially endangering one or more patients, workers or the public.

Note: HIV-related information, genetic information, mental health records and other specially protected health information may be subject to certain special confidentiality protections under applicable State and Federal law. Any disclosures of these types of records will be subject to these special protections.

Cookies and Analytics

Cookies: If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

Embedded content from other websites: Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Facebook conversion pixels: We use the “Custom Audience pixel” of Facebook Inc., 1601 S. California Ave, Palo Alto, CA 94304, USA (“Facebook”) on our website. With its help, we can keep track of what users do after they see or click on a Facebook advertisement. This enables us to monitor the effectiveness of Facebook ads for purposes of statistics and market research. Data collected in this way is anonymous to us, which means we cannot see the personal data of individual users. However, this data is saved and processed by Facebook. Facebook can connect this data with your Facebook account and use it for its own advertising purposes, in accordance with Facebook’s Data Policy which can be found at https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/. You can allow Facebook and its partners to place ads on and outside of Facebook. A cookie can also be saved on your device for these purposes.

Please click here if you would like to withdraw your consent https://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=ads#_=_

Google Analytics: Our website uses Google Analytics, a web analysis service of Google, Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043 USA, www.google.com (“Google Analytics” or “Google”). Google Analytics employs cookies that are stored to your computer in order to facilitate an analysis of your use of the site. The information generated by these cookies, such as time, place and frequency of your visits to our site, including your IP address, is transmitted to Google’s location in the US and stored there.

In using Google Analytics our website employs the extension “anonymizeIp”. In doing so, Google abbreviates and thereby anonymizes your IP address before transferring it from EU/EEA member states. Google uses this information to analyze your use of our site, to compile reports for us on internet activity and to provide other services relating to our website.

Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law or where such third parties process this data on Google’s behalf. Google states that it will in never associate your IP address with other data held by Google. You can prevent cookies from being installed by adjusting the settings on your browser software accordingly as noted elsewhere in this Privacy Policy. You should be aware, however, that by doing so you may not be able to make full use of all the functions of our website.

Google Analytics also offers a deactivation add-on for most current browsers that provides you with more control over what data Google can collect on websites you access. The add-on tells the JavaScript (ga.js) used by Google Analytics not to transmit any information about website visits to Google Analytics. However, the browser deactivation add-on offered by Google Analytics does not prevent information from being transmitted to us or to other web analysis services we may engage.

Google Analytics also uses electronic images known as web beacons (sometimes called single pixel gifs) and are used along with cookies to compile aggregated statistics to analyze how our site is used.

You can find additional information on how to install the browser add-on referenced above at the following link: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en.

For the cases in which personal data is transferred to the US, Google has self-certified pursuant to the EU-US Privacy Shield (https://www.privacyshield.gov/EU-US-Framework).

For More Information or to Report a Problem/Complaint

If you believe your privacy rights have been violated, you should immediately contact:

Valley Women’s Health

585 N 500 W Provo, UT 84601 

(801) 3740-1801

We will not take action against you for filing a complaint. You may also file a complaint with the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

If you have any questions or would like further information about this notice, please contact Valley Women’s Health, Privacy Officer at the above address. This notice is also available on our website at valleywomenshealth.com.