NOTICE OF PRIVACY PRACTICES
This notice describes how health information about you may be used and disclosed and how you can get access to this information. Please review it carefully. The privacy of your health information is important to us.

Our Legal Duty
We are required by applicable federal and state law to maintain the privacy of your health information. We are also required to give you this notice about our privacy practices, our legal duties and your rights concerning your health information. We must follow the privacy practices that are described in this notice while it is in effect. This notice takes effect January 1, 2003 and will remain in effect until we replace it.

We reserve the right to change our privacy practices and the terms of this notice at any time, provided such changes are permitted by applicable law. We reserve the right to make changes in our privacy practices and the new terms of our notice effective for all health information that we maintain, including health information we created or received before we made the changes. Before we make a significant change in our privacy practices, we will change this notice and make the new notice available upon request.

Uses and Disclosure of Health Information.
We use and disclose health information about you for treatment, payment, and healthcare operation. For example:

Treatment: We may use or disclose your health information to a physician, dental specialist or other healthcare provider providing treatment for you.

Payment: We may use and disclose your health information to obtain payment for services we provide you.

Healthcare Operation: We may use and disclose your health information in connection with our healthcare operations. Healthcare operation include quality assessment and improvement activities, reviewing the competence or qualifications of healthcare professionals, evaluating practitioner and provider performance, conducting training programs, accreditation, certification, licensing or credential activities.

Your Authorization: In addition to our use of your health information for treatment, payment of healthcare operations, you may give us written authorization to use your health information or to disclose it to any one for any purpose. If you give us an authorization, you may revoke it in writing at any time. Your revocation will not affect any use of disclosures permitted by your authorization while it was in effect. Unless you give us written authorization, we cannot use or disclose your health information for any reason except those described in this notice.

To Your Family and Friends: We must disclose your health information to you, as described in the patient Rights section of this notice. We may disclose your health information to a family member, friend, or other persons to the extent necessary to help with your healthcare or payment or our healthcare, but only if you agree that we may do so.

Persons Involved in Care: We may use or disclose health information to notify, or assist notification of (including identifying or locating) a family member, your personal representative or another person responsible for your care, of your location, your general condition, or death. If you are present, then prior to use or disclosure of your health information, we will provide you with an opportunity to object to such uses or disclosures. In the event of your incapacity or emergency circumstances, we will disclose health information based on a determination using our professional judgment disclosing only health information that is directly relevant to the person's involvement in your health care. We will also use our professional judgment and our experience with common practice to make reasonable inferences of your best interest in allowing a person to pick up filled prescriptions, medical supplies, x-rays, or simi liar forms of health information.

Marketing Health-Related Services: We will not use your health information for marketing communications without your written consent.

Required by Law: We may use or disclose your health information when we are required to do so by law.

Abuse or Neglect: We may disclose your health information to appropriate authorities if we reasonably believe that you are a possible victim of abuse, neglect, or domestic violation or the possible victim of other crimes. We may disclose your health information to the extent necessary to avert a serious threat to the health or safety of others.

National Security: We may disclose to military authorities the health information of Armed forces personnel under certain circumstances. We may disclose to authorized federal officials health information required for lawful intelligence, counterintelligence, and other national security activities. We may disclose to correctional institutions or law enforcement officials having lawful custody of protected health information of inmates or patients under certain circumstances.

Appointment Reminders: We may use or disclose your health information to provide you with appointment reminders (such as voicemail messages, postcards, letters, or emails).

PATIENT RIGHTS
Access: You have the right to look at or get copies of your health information, with limited exceptions. You may request that we provide copies in a format other than photocopies. We will provide the format you request unless we cannot practically do so. (You must make a request in writing to obtain access to your health information.) You may obtain a form to request access by using the contact information listed below. We will charge you a reasonable cost based fee for expenses such as copies and staff time. You may request access by sending us a letter to the address listed below. If you request copies, we will charge you $20.00 which includes the cost of photocopying and staff time to locate your health information, and postage if you want the copies mailed to you. If you request an alternate format, we will charge a cost based fee for providing your health information in that format. If you prefer, we will prepare a summary of explanation of your health information for a fee. Contact us for a full explanation of our fee structure.

Disclosure Accounting: You have the right to receive a list of instances in which we or our business associates disclosed your health information for purposes to the treatment, payment, healthcare operations or certain other activities, of the last six years, but not before April 14, 2003. If you request this accounting more than once i an 12-month period, we may charge you a reasonable, cost base fee for responding to these additional requests.