Privacy Policy
Oasis Eye Face and Skin / Dr. Vivian Schiedler
251 Maple Street, Ashland, OR 97520
(541) 708-6393
(541) 537-5046
We understand the importance of privacy and are committed to maintaining the confidentiality of your medical information. We make a record of the medical care we provide and may receive such records from others. We use these records to provide or enable other health care providers to provide quality medical care, to obtain payment for services provided to you as allowed by your health plan, and to enable us to meet our professional and legal obligations to operate this medical practice properly.
We are required by law to maintain the privacy of protected health information and to provide individuals with notice of our legal duties and privacy practices with respect to protected health information. This notice describes how we may use and disclose your medical information. It also describes your rights and our legal obligations with respect to your medical information. If you have any questions about this Notice, please contact our office directly.
A. How Dr. Vivian Schiedler May Use Or Disclose Your Health Information
1. Overview
Dr. Vivian Schiedler collects health information about you and stores it in a chart and on a computer. This is your medical record. The medial record is the property of this medical practice, but the information in the medical record belongs to you. The law permits us to use or disclose your health information for the following purposes:
2. Treatment.
We use medical information about you to provide your medical care. We disclose medical information to our employees and others who are involved in providing the care you need. For example, we may share your medical information with other physicians or other health care providers who will provide services which we do not provide. Or we may share this information with a pharmacist who needs it to dispense a prescription to you, or a laboratory that performs a test. We may also disclose medical information to members of your family or others who can help you when you are sick or injured.
3. Payment.
We use and disclose medical information about you to obtain payment for the services we provide. For example, we give your health plan the information it requires before it will pay us. We may also disclose information to other health care providers to assist them in obtaining payment for services they have provided to you.
4. Health Care Operations.
We may use and disclose medical information about you to operate this quality of care we provide, or the competence and qualifications of our professional staff. Or we may use and disclose this information to get your health plan to authorize services or referrals. We may also use and disclose this information as necessary for medical reviews, legal services and audits, including fraud and abuse detection and compliance programs and business planning and management. We may also share your medical information with our “business associates”, such as our billing service, that perform administrative services for us. We have a written contract with each of these business associates that contains terms requiring them to protect the confidentiality of your medical information. Although federal law does not protect health information which is disclosed to someone other than another health care provider, health plan or health care clearinghouse, under Oregon law all recipients of health care information are prohibited from re-disclosing it except as specifically required or permitted by law. We may also share your information with other health care providers, health care clearinghouses or health plans that have a relationship with you when they request this information to help them with their quality assessment and improvement activities, their efforts to improve health or reduce health care costs, their review of competence, qualifications and performance of health care professionals, their training programs, their accreditation, certification or licensing activities, or their health care fraud and abuse detection and compliance efforts.
5. Appointment Reminders.
We may use and disclose medical information to contact and remind you about appointments. If you are not home, we may leave this information on your answering machine or in a message left with the person answering the phone.
6. Sign In Sheet.
We may use and disclose medical information about you by having you sign in when you arrive at our office. We may also call out your name when we are ready to see you.
7. Notification and Communication with Family.
We may disclose your health information to notify or assist in notifying a family member, your personal representative or another person responsible for your care about your location, your general condition or in the event of your death. In the event of a disaster, we my disclose information to a relief organization so that they may coordinate these notification efforts. We may also disclose information to someone who is involved with your care or helps pay for your care. If you are able and available to agree or object, we will give you the opportunity to object prior to making these disclosures, although we may disclose this information in a disaster even over your objection if we believe it is necessary to respond to the emergency circumstances. If you are unable or unavailable to agree or object, our health professionals will use their best judgment in communication with your family and others.
8. Marketing.
We may contact you to give you information about products or services related to your treatment, case management or care coordination, or to direct or recommend other treatments or health-related benefits and services that may be of interest to you, or to provide you with small gifts. We may also encourage you to purchase a product or service when we see you. We will not otherwise use or disclose your medical information for marketing purposes without your written authorization.
9. Required By Law.
As required by law, we will use and disclose your health information, but we will limit our use or disclosure to the relevant requirements of the law. When the law requires us to report abuse, neglect or domestic violence, or respond to judicial or administrative proceedings, or to law enforcement officials, we will further comply with the requirement set forth below concerning those activities.
10. Public Health.
We may, and are sometimes required by law, to disclose your health information to public authorities for purposes related to: preventing or controlling disease, injury or disability; reporting child, elder or dependent adult abuse or neglect; reporting domestic violence; reporting to the Food and Drug Administration problems with products and reactions to medications; and reporting disease or infection exposure. When we report suspected elder or dependent adult abuse or domestic violence, we will inform you or your personal representative promptly unless in our best professional judgment we believe the notification would place you at risk of serious harm or would require informing a personal representative we believe is responsible for the abuse or harm.
11. Health Oversight Activities.
We may, and are sometimes required by law, to disclose your health information to health oversight agencies during the course of audits, investigations, inspections, licensure and other proceedings, subject to the limitations imposed by federal and Oregon law.
12. Judicial and Administrative Proceedings.
We may, and are sometimes required by law, to disclose your health information in the course of any administrative or judicial proceeding to the extent expressly authorized by a court or administrative order. We may also disclose information about you in response to a subpoena, discovery request or other lawful process if reasonable efforts have been made to notify you of the request and you have not objected, or if your objections have been resolved by a court or administrative order.
13. Law Enforcement.
We may, and are sometimes required by law, to disclose your health information to a law enforcement official for purposes such as identifying or locating a suspect, fugitive, material witness or missing person, complying with a court order, warrant, grand jury subpoena and other law enforcement purposes.
14. Coroners.
We may, and are often required by law, to disclose your health information to coroners in connection with their investigations of deaths.
15. Organ or Tissue Donation.
We may disclose your health information to organizations involved in procuring, banking or transplanting organs and tissues.
16. Public Safety.
We may, and are sometimes required by law, to disclose your health information to appropriate persons in order to prevent or lessen a serious and imminent threat to the health or safety of a particular person or the general public.
17. Specialized Government Functions.
We may disclose your health information for military or national security purposes or to correctional institutions or law enforcement officers that have you in their lawful custody.
18. Worker’s Compensation.
We may disclose your health information as necessary to comply with worker’s compensation laws. For example, to the extent your care is covered by workers’ compensation, we will make periodic reports to your employer about your condition. We are also required by law to report cases of occupational injury or occupational illness to the employer or workers’ compensation insurer.
19. Change of Ownership.
In the event that this medical practice is sold or merged with another organization, your health information/record will become the property of the new owner, although you will maintain the right to request that copies of your health information be transferred to another physician or medical group.
20. Computer Information Collected
When you use our Website, we automatically collect certain computer information by the interaction of your mobile phone or web browser with our Website. Such information is typically considered NPI. We may also collect any of the following:
Cookies – Our Website uses “Cookies.” A Cookie is a small piece of data stored on your computer or mobile device by your web browser. We use Cookies to identify the areas of our Website that you have visited. We may also use Cookies to identify you as a Member so that you can access various parts or features of our Website. Finally, we may use Cookies to personalize the Content that you see on our Website. Most web browsers can be set to disable the use of Cookies. However, if you disable Cookies, you may not be able to access features on our Website correctly or at all. We never place PII in Cookies.
Web Beacons – We may also use a technology called, web beacons, to collect general information about your use of our Website and your use of special promotions or newsletters. The information we collect by Web Beacons allows us to statistically monitor the number of people that open our emails. Our Web Beacons are not used to track your activity outside of our Website. We do not link NPI from Web Beacons to PII without your permission.
Automatic Information – We automatically receive information from your web browser or mobile device. This information includes the name of the website from which you entered our Website, if any, as well as the name of the website to which you’re headed when you leave our website. This information also includes the IP address of your computer/proxy server that you use to access the Internet, your Internet Website provider name, web browser type, type of mobile device, and computer operating system. We use all of this information to analyze trends among our Users to help improve our Website.
21. Google Ad Data
Google Ad Data – Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on our site. Google’s use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to your users based on their visit to your sites and other sites on the Internet. Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy at the following link: http://www.google.com/policies/technologies/ads.
22. Google Analytics Privacy Policy
Our website uses “Google Analytics” to collect information about the use of our site. Google Analytics collects information such as how often users visit our site, what pages they visit when they do so, and what other sites they used prior to coming to our site. We use the information we get from Google Analytics to improve our site. Google Analytics collects only the IP address assigned to you on the date you visit our site, rather than your name or other identifying information. We do not combine the information collected through the use of Google Analytics with personally identifiable information. Although Google Analytics plants a permanent cookie on your web browser to identify you as a unique user the next time you visit our site, the cookie cannot be used by anyone but Google. Google’s ability to use and share information collected by Google Analytics about your visits to our site is restricted by the Google Analytics Terms of Use. http://www.google.com/analytics/terms/us.html. You can prevent Google Analytics from recognizing you on return visits to this site by disabling cookies on your browser. https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout
B. When This Medical Practice May Not Use or Disclose Your Health Information.
Except as described in this Notice of Privacy Practices, Dr. Vivian Schiedler will not use or disclose health information which identifies you without your written authorization. If you do authorize this medical practice to use or disclose your health information for another purpose, you may revoke your authorization in writing at any time.
C. Your Health Information Rights
1. Right to Request Special Privacy Protections.
You have the right to request restrictions on certain uses and disclosures of your health information by a written request specifying what information you want to limit and what limitations on our use or disclosure of that information you wish to have imposed. We reserve the right to accept or reject your request and will notify you of our decision.
2. Right to Request Confidential Communications.
You have the right to request that you receive your health information either mailed to a specific location or you or someone you have authorized in writing may pick up the information in person.
3. Right to Inspect and Copy.
You have the right to inspect and copy your health information, with limited exceptions. To access your medical information, you must submit a written request detailing what information you want access to and whether you want to inspect it or get a copy of it. We will charge a reasonable fee, as allowed by State and federal law. We may deny your request under limited circumstances. If we deny your request to access your child’s records or the records of an incapacitated adult you are representing because we believe allowing access would be reasonably likely to cause substantial harm to the patient, you will have a right to appeal our decision. If we deny your request to access your psychotherapy notes, you will have the right to have them transferred to another mental health professional.
4. Right to Amend or Supplement.
You have a right to request that we amend your health information that you believe is incorrect or incomplete. You must make a request to amend in writing and include the reasons you believe the information is inaccurate or incomplete. We are not required to change your health information, and will provide you with information about this medical practice’s denial and how you can disagree with the denial. We may deny your request if we do not have the information, if we did not create the information (unless the person or entity that created the information is no longer available to make the amendment), if you would not be permitted to inspect or copy the information at issue, or if the information is accurate and complete as is. You also have the right to request that we add to your record a statement of up to 250 words concerning any statement or item you believe to be incomplete or incorrect.
5. Right to an Accounting of Disclosures.
You have a right to receive an accounting of disclosures of your health information made by this medical practice, except that this medical practice does not have to account for the disclosures provide to you or pursuant to your written authorization, or as described in paragraphs 1(treatment), 2 (payment), 3 (health care operations), 6 (notification and communication with family) and 16 (specialized government functions) of Section A of this Notice of Privacy Practices or disclosures for purposes of research or public health which exclude direct patient identifiers, or which are incident to a use or disclosure otherwise permitted or authorized by law, or the disclosures to a health oversight agency or law enforcement official to the extent this medical practice has received notice from that agency or official that providing this accounting would be reasonably likely to impede their activities.
6. You have a right to a paper copy of this Notice of Privacy Practices, even if you have previously requested its receipt.
If you would like to have a more detailed explanation of these rights or if you would like to exercise one or more of these rights, contact our Privacy Officer listed at the top of this Notice of Privacy Practices.
D. Changes to this Notice of Privacy Practices
We reserve the right to amend this Notice of Privacy Practices at any time in the future. Until such amendment is made, we are required by law to comply with this Notice. After an amendment is made, the revised Notice of Privacy Protections will apply to all protected health information that we maintain, regardless of when it was created or received. We will keep a copy of the current notice posted in our reception area and will offer you a copy. We will also post the current notice on our website.
E. Complaints
If you believe your privacy rights have been violated, you may file a complaint with our office.