OMNIFLIGHT HELICOPTERS, INC.,
PROVIDER PRIVACY NOTICE
IMPORTANT: 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.
As an essential part of our commitment to you, Omniflight Helicopters, Inc.,
Provider maintains the privacy of certain confidential health care information
about you, known as Protected Health Information or PHI. We are required by law
to protect your health care information and to provide you with the attached
Notice of Privacy Practices.
The Notice outlines our legal duties and privacy practices respect to your PHI.
It not only describes our privacy practices and your legal rights, but lets you
know, among other things, how Omniflight Helicopters, Inc., Provider is
permitted to use and disclose PHI about you, how you can access and copy that
information, how you may request amendment of that information, and how you may
request restrictions on our use and disclosure of your PHI.
Omniflight Helicopters, Inc., Provider is also required to abide by the terms of
the version of this Notice currently in effect. In most situations we may use
this information as described in this Notice without your permission, but there
are some situations where we may use it only after we obtain your written
authorization, if we are required by law to do so.
We respect your privacy, and treat all health care information about our
patients with care under strict policies of confidentiality that all of our
staff are committed to following at all times.
PLEASE READ THE ATTACHED DETAILED NOTICE. IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT IT,
PLEASE CONTACT THE APPROPRIATE PERSON:
Martin Rincon
Corporate Privacy Officer
Omniflight Helicopters, Inc.
Omni Transport Systems, Dallas, L.L.C.
4650 Airport Parkway
Addison, Texas 75001
1-800-727-4644
Lynda LaRue, Provider Privacy Officer
Bill Garret, Designated Provider Privacy Assistant
Omni Transport Systems, Alabama, L.L.C.
1557 Walnut Hill Circle
Birmingham, Alabama 35234
1-205-502-6914
Michael Angelo Gallo, Provider Privacy Officer
Rick Kidd, Designated Provider Privacy Assistant
Omni Transport Systems, Charleston, L.L.C.
71 Courtenay Drive
Charleston, South Carolina 29403
1-800-423-1330
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.
Purpose of this Notice: Omniflight Helicopters, Inc., Provider is required by
law to maintain the privacy of certain confidential health care information,
known as Protected Health Information or PHI, and to provide you with a notice
of our legal duties and privacy practices with respect to your PHI. This Notice
describes your legal rights, advises you of our privacy practices, and lets you
know how Omniflight Helicopters, Inc., Provider is permitted to use and disclose
PHI about you.
Omniflight Helicopters, Inc., Provider is also required to abide by the terms of
the version of this Notice currently in effect. In most situations we may use
this information as described in this Notice without your permission, but there
are some situations where we may use it only after we obtain your written
authorization, if we are required by law to do so.
Uses and Disclosures of PHI: Omniflight Helicopters, Inc., Provider may use PHI
for the purposes of treatment, payment, and health care operations, in most
cases without your written permission. Examples of our use of your PHI:
For treatment. This includes such things as verbal and written information that
we obtain about you and use pertaining to your medical condition and treatment
provided to you by us and other medical personnel (including doctors and nurses
who give orders to allow us to provide treatment to you). It also includes
information we give to other health care personnel to whom we transfer your care
and treatment, and includes transfer of PHI via radio or telephone to the
hospital or dispatch center as well as providing the hospital with a copy of the
written record we create in the course of providing you with treatment and
transport.
For payment. This includes any activities we must undertake in order to get
reimbursed for the services we provide to you, including such things as
organizing your PHI and submitting bills to insurance companies (either directly
or through a third party billing company), management of billed claims for
services rendered, medical necessity determinations and reviews, utilization
review, and collection of outstanding accounts. Omniflight Helicopters, Inc.,
Provider utilize Med Bill Resources, Inc., 59 S. Terrace Avenue, Newark, OH,
43055, as their third party billing company.
For health care operations. This includes quality assurance activities,
licensing, and training programs to ensure that our personnel meet our standards
of care and follow established policies and procedures, obtaining legal and
financial services, conducting business planning, processing grievances and
complaints, creating reports that do not individually identify you for data
collection purposes, fundraising, and certain marketing activities.
===============
Use and Disclosure of PHI Without Your Authorization.
Omniflight Helicopters, Inc., Provider is permitted to use PHI without your
written authorization, or opportunity to object in certain situations,
including:
* For Omniflight Helicopters, Inc., Provider use in treating you or in obtaining
payment for services provided to you or in other health care operations;
* For the treatment activities of another health care provider;
* To another health care provider or entity for the payment activities of the
provider or entity that receives the information (such as your hospital or
insurance company);
* To another health care provider (such as the hospital to which you are
transported) for the health care operations activities of the entity that
receives the information as long as the entity receiving the information has or
has had a relationship with you and the PHI pertains to that relationship;
* For health care fraud and abuse detection or for activities related to
compliance with the law;
* To a family member, other relative, or close personal friend or other
individual involved in your care if we obtain your verbal agreement to do so or
if we give you an opportunity to object to such a disclosure and you do not
raise an objection. We may also disclose health information to your family,
relatives, or friends if we infer from the circumstances that you would not
object. For example, we may assume you agree to our disclosure of your personal
health information to your spouse when your spouse has called the ambulance for
you. In situations where you are not capable of objecting (because you are not
present or due to your incapacity or medical emergency), we may, in our
professional judgment, determine that a disclosure to your family member,
relative, or friend is in your best interest. In that situation, we will
disclose only health information relevant to that person's involvement in your
care. For example, we may inform the person who accompanied you in the ambulance
that you have certain symptoms and we may give that person an update on your
vital signs and treatment that is being administered by our ambulance crew;
* To a public health authority in certain situations (such as reporting a birth,
death or disease as required by law, as part of a public health investigation,
to report child or adult abuse or neglect or domestic violence, to report
adverse events such as product defects, or to notify a person about exposure to
a possible communicable disease as required by law;
* For health oversight activities including audits or government investigations,
inspections, disciplinary proceedings, and other administrative or judicial
actions undertaken by the government (or their contractors) by law to oversee
the health care system;
* For judicial and administrative proceedings as required by a court or
administrative order, or in some cases in response to a subpoena or other legal
process;
* For law enforcement activities in limited situations, such as when there is a
warrant for the request, or when the information is needed to locate a suspect
or stop a crime;
* For military, national defense and security and other special government
functions;
* To avert a serious threat to the health and safety of a person or the public
at large;
* For workers’ compensation purposes, and in compliance with workers’
compensation laws;
* To coroners, medical examiners, and funeral directors for identifying a
deceased person, determining cause of death, or carrying on their duties as
authorized by law;
* If you are an organ donor, we may release health information to organizations
that handle organ procurement or organ, eye or tissue transplantation or to an
organ donation bank, as necessary to facilitate organ donation and
transplantation;
* For research projects, but this will be subject to strict oversight and
approvals and health information will be released only when there is a minimal
risk to your privacy and adequate safeguards are in place in accordance with the
law;
* We may use or disclose health information about you in a way that does not
personally identify you or reveal who you are.
Any other use or disclosure of PHI, other than those listed above will only be
made with your written authorization, (the authorization must specifically
identify the information we seek to use or disclose, as well as when and how we
seek to use or disclose it). You may revoke your authorization at any time, in
writing, except to the extent that we have already used or disclosed medical
information in reliance on that authorization.
==================
Patient Rights: As a patient, you have a number of rights with respect to the
protection of your PHI, including:
The right to access, copy or inspect your PHI. This means you may come to our
offices and inspect and copy most of the medical information about you that we
maintain. We will normally provide you with access to this information within 30
days of your request. We may also charge you a reasonable fee for you to copy
any medical information that you have the right to access. In limited
circumstances, we may deny you access to your medical information, and you may
appeal certain types of denials.
We have available forms to request access to your PHI and we will provide a
written response if we deny you access and let you know your appeal rights. If
you wish to inspect and copy your medical information, you should contact the
privacy officer listed at the end of this Notice.
The right to amend your PHI. You have the right to ask us to amend written
medical information that we may have about you. We will generally amend your
information within 60 days of your request and will notify you when we have
amended the information. We are permitted by law to deny your request to amend
your medical information only in certain circumstances, like when we believe the
information you have asked us to amend is correct. If you wish to request that
we amend the medical information that we have about you, you should contact the
privacy officer listed at the end of this Notice.
The right to request an accounting of our use and disclosure of your PHI. You
may request an accounting from us of certain disclosures of your medical
information that we have made in the last six years prior to the date of your
request. We are not required to give you an accounting of information we have
used or disclosed for purposes of treatment, payment or health care operations,
or when we share your health information with our business associates, like our
billing company or a medical facility from/to which we have transported you.
We are also not required to give you an accounting of our uses of protected
health information for which you have already given us written authorization. If
you wish to request an accounting of the medical information about you that we
have used or disclosed that is not exempted from the accounting requirement, you
should contact the privacy officer listed at the end of this Notice.
The right to request that we restrict the uses and disclosures of your PHI. You
have the right to request that we restrict how we use and disclose your medical
information that we have about you for treatment, payment or health care
operations, or to restrict the information that is provided to family, friends
and other individuals involved in your health care. But if you request a
restriction and the information you asked us to restrict is needed to provide
you with emergency treatment, then we may use the PHI or disclose the PHI to a
health care provider to provide you with emergency treatment. Omniflight
Helicopters, Inc., Provider is not required to agree to any restrictions you
request, but any restrictions agreed to by Omniflight Helicopters, Inc.,
Provider is binding on Omniflight Helicopters, Inc.
Internet, Electronic Mail, and the Right to Obtain Copy of Paper Notice on
Request. If we maintain a web site, we will prominently post a copy of this
Notice on our web site and make the Notice available electronically through the
web site. If you allow us, we will forward you this Notice by electronic mail
instead of on paper and you may always request a paper copy of the Notice.
Revisions to the Notice: Omniflight Helicopters, Inc., Provider reserves the
right to change the terms of this Notice at any time, and the changes will be
effective immediately and will apply to all protected health information that we
maintain. Any material changes to the Notice will be promptly posted in our
facilities and posted to our web site, if we maintain one. You can get a copy of
the latest version of this Notice by contacting the Privacy Officer identified
below.
Your Legal Rights and Complaints: You also have the right to complain to us, or
to the Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services if
you believe your privacy rights have been violated. You will not be retaliated
against in any way for filing a complaint with us or to the government. Should
you have any questions, comments or complaints you may direct all inquiries to
the privacy officer listed at the end of this Notice. Individuals will not be
retaliated against for filing a complaint.
If you have any questions or if you wish to file a complaint or exercise any
rights listed in this Notice, please contact the appropriate person:
Martin Rincon
Corporate Privacy Officer
Omniflight Helicopters, Inc.
Omni Transport Systems, Dallas, L.L.C.
4650 Airport Parkway
Addison, Texas 75001
1-800-727-4644
Lynda LaRue, Provider Privacy Officer
Bill Garret, Designated Provider Privacy Assistant
Omni Transport Systems, Alabama, L.L.C.
1557 Walnut Hill Circle
Birmingham, Alabama 35234
1-205-502-6914
Michael Angelo Gallo, Provider Privacy Officer
Rick Kidd, Designated Provider Privacy Assistant
Omni Transport Systems, Charleston, L.L.C.
71 Courtenay Drive
Charleston, South Carolina 29403
1-800-423-1330
Effective Date of the Notice: April 14, 2003