HIPAA
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996
Patient Information
Oklahoma State University is committed to protecting the privacy of your health information. Under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), we have formalized our practices related to maintaining the privacy and security of medical information. This Web site provides information on your rights as a patient of Oklahoma State University and how to act on these rights.
Right to be Informed of Our Privacy Practices
Our practices related to protecting the privacy of your health information are described in our PSC HIPAA Privacy Notice (HPN). The HPN describes how we use your information to provide treatment to you, to obtain payment for that treatment and for our internal operations. You will be given a copy of the HPN at your first visit after July 1st, 2005. We will also ask you to sign an acknowledgment indicating that you have been given a copy of our HPN. Signing the acknowledgment is not required for us to continue to protect the privacy of your health information as described in the HPN. We ask for your signature so that we can keep track of who has been given a copy of our HPN.
Right to Request Access to Your Health Information
You have the ability to request a copy of your health information or to allow others to have access to your health information. If you would like a copy of your health information, we have a request to inspect and copy records form. If you would like some of your health records sent to someone else, for example to another physician or to your employer, you will need to complete our release of information form indicating that you agree to our releasing the information.
Right to Amend Your Health Information
If you believe that there is an error in our records, you can request that we correct them using our request for correction or amendment of PHI form. We will review the information as requested and either make the correction or let you know why we think our information is correct.
Right to Request Confidential Communication of Your Health Information
We normally send information relating to your care to the address and phone numbers you have provided. However, if you would like to have the information sent elsewhere to protect the confidentiality of the information, you may do so by completing our restriction form.
Right to Request Restrictions on the Use and Disclosure of Your Health Information
You may request that we restrict who has access to your health information using our request restrictions form. Note however, that some requests will not be possible for us to accept. We currently limit the information that we use to only that information which is necessary to provide quality medical care, to receive payment for that care, for managing our operations and to meet legal requirements such as reporting of communicable diseases. This means that only those individuals who need to have access to your records are allowed access and even then that they only examine those portions of your records which are needed to perform their job. Requests which would make it difficult to perform these functions mean that we would not be able to provide the best care to you and thus we can not accept them.
Right to Request an Accounting of People to Whom We Have Disclosed Your Health Information
HIPAA requires that we keep track of people, with few exceptions, who have been given access to your health information for purposes not related to your treatment, payment, our health care operations, or for whom you have not authorized us to provide access. To request a list of any of these disclosures, you may complete our client request for disclosures of health information form.