Patient Bill of Rights

 All visits to the Lakewood Family Clinic are private and confidential. This means information (such as your chart or anything you tell providers) is private and not shared with other people (e.g. your family) unless there is a very serious problem such as suicide or abuse, when we are required by law to share this information with a specialist.
Patient privacy HIPAA

PROMISED PROTECTION FOR YOUR CONFIDENTIAL HEALTH INFORMATION

We have many ways of safeguarding your privacy – like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996. This multi-faceted law improves a variety of service areas related to your treatment. Issues covered include health insurance, medical savings accounts, waste reduction, and more.

What is HIPAA?

HIPAA is the acronym for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act that was signed into law on August 21, 1996, Public Law 104-191.

This law impacts all areas of the healthcare industry and was designed to provide insurance portability, to improve the efficiency of healthcare by standardizing the exchange of administrative and financial data, and to protect the privacy, confidentiality and security of healthcare information.

The law is designed to:

  • Improve portability and continuity of health insurance coverage.
  • Combat waste, fraud and abuse in health insurance and healthcare delivery.
  • Promote the use of medical savings accounts.
  • Improve access to long-term care services and coverage.
  • Simplify administration of health insurance and for other purposes. [H.R. 3103].
Health information disclosure

You can choose to authorize disclosure of your health or billing information to a third party.

You have the right to release your personal information

Under federal law, we can only release your personal health information to those directly involved in providing your care; however, you have the right to grant access to your personal medical or billing information to other individuals or organizations of your choice. If you choose to do so, we require a written authorization.

If you still have questions or concerns pertaining to this section, contact us at Lakewood Family Clinic and we will be glad to have this discussion with you.