PERMITTED USES AND DISCLOSURES
Once you give your written consent, we can use or disclose your protected health information for purposes of treatment, payment and health care operations. If you refuse to consent, we do not have to provide you with non-emergency care.

Treatment means the provision, coordination or management of your health care, including consultations between health care providers regarding your care and referrals for health care from one health care provider to another. For example, a doctor treating you for a broken leg may need to know if you have diabetes because diabetes may slow the healing process. Therefore, the doctor may review your medical records to assess whether you have potentially complicating conditions like diabetes.

Payment means activities we undertake to obtain reimbursement for the health care provided to you, including determinations of eligibility and coverage and other utilization review activities. For example, prior to providing health care services, we may need to provide to your HMO information about your medical condition to determine whether the proposed course of treatment will be covered. When we subsequently bill the HMO for the services rendered to you, we can provide the HMO with information regarding your care if necessary to obtain payment.

Health care operations means the support functions of our practice related to treatment and payment, such as quality assurance activities, case management, receiving and responding to patient complaints, physician reviews, compliance programs, audits, business planning, development, management and administrative activities. For example, we may use your medical information to evaluate the performance of our staff in caring for you. We may also combine medical information about many patients to decide what additional services we should offer, what services are not needed, and whether certain new treatments are effective.

EXCEPTIONS
Even without your written consent or authorization, we can use or disclose protected health information for purposes of treatment, payment and health care operations if:

• We have an indirect treatment relationship with you, that is, we provide health care to you based on the orders of another health care provider.
  
• You are a prison inmate at the time we created or received the protected health information;
  
• You need emergency care and are incapable of giving consent, provided that we attempt to obtain your consent as soon as reasonably possible after the delivery of emergency treatment;
  
• We are required by law to treat you, and our attempts to obtain your consent are unsuccessful; or
  
• We attempt to obtain your consent but cannot do so due to substantial barriers to communicating with you, and we determine that your consent to receive treatment is clearly inferred from the circumstances.

OTHER USES AND DISCLOSURES
We may contact you to provide appointment reminders or information about treatment alternatives or other health related benefits and services that may be of interest to you.

We may disclose your protected health information to your family or friends or any other individual identified by you when they are involved in your care or the payment for your care. We will only disclose the protected health information directly relevant to their involvement in your care or payment. We may also use or disclose your protected health information to notify, or assist in the notification of, a family member, a personal representative, or another person responsible for your care of your location, general condition or death. If you are available, we will give you an opportunity to object to these disclosures, and we will not make these disclosures if you object. If you are not available, we will determine whether a disclosure to your family or friends is in your best interest, and we will disclose only the protected health information that is directly relevant to their involvement in your care. When permitted by law, we may coordinate our uses and disclosures of protected health information with public or private entities authorized by law or by charter to assist in disaster relief efforts.

We will allow your family and friends to act on your behalf to pick up filled prescriptions, medical supplies, X-rays, and similar forms of protected health information, when we determine, in our professional judgment that it is in your best interest to make such disclosures.

We may contact you as part of our marketing efforts as permitted by applicable law.

Except for the special situations set forth below, we will not use or disclose your protected health information for any other purpose unless you provide written authorization. You have the right to revoke that authorization at any time, provided that the revocation is in writing, except to the extent that we already have taken action in reliance on your authorization.

SPECIAL SITUATIONS
Organ and Tissue Donation: If you are an organ donor, we may release medical information to organizations that handle organ procurement or organ, eye or tissue transplantation or to an organ donation bank, as necessary to facilitate organ or tissue donation and transplantation.

Military and Veterans: If you are a member of the armed forces, we may release medical information about you as required by military command authorities. We may also release medical information about foreign military personnel to the appropriate foreign military authority.

Worker's Compensation: We may release medical information about you for programs that provide benefits for work-related injuries or illness.

Public Health Risks: We may disclose medical information about you for public health activities. These activities generally include the following:

• to prevent or control disease, injury or disability;
  
• to report births and deaths;
  
• to report child abuse or neglect;
  
• to report reactions to medications or problems with products;
  
• to notify people of product, recalls, repairs of replacements;
  
• to notify a person who may have been exposed to a disease or may be at risk for contracting or spreading a disease or condition;
  
• to notify the appropriate government authority if we believe a patient has been the victim of abuse, neglect or domestic violence. We will only make this disclosure if you agree or when required or authorized by law.

Health Oversight Activities: We may disclose medical information to federal or state agencies that oversee our activities. These activities are necessary for the government to monitor the health care system, government programs, and compliance with civil rights laws. We may disclose protected health information to persons under the Food and Drug Administration's jurisdiction to track products or to conduct post-marketing surveillance.

Lawsuits and Disputes: If you are involved in a lawsuit or a dispute, we may disclose medical information about you in response to a court or administrative order. We may also disclose medical information about you in response to a subpoena, discovery request, or other lawful process by someone else involved in the dispute, but only if efforts have been made to tell you about the request or to obtain an order protecting the information requested.

Law Enforcement: We may release medical information if asked to do so by law enforcement official:

• In response to a court order, subpoena, warrant, summons or similar process;
  
• To identify or locate a suspect, fugitive, material witness, or missing person;
  
• About the victim of a crime if, under certain limited circumstances, we are unable to obtain the person's agreement;
  
• About a death we believe may be the result of criminal conduct;
  
• About criminal conduct on our premises; and
  
• In emergency circumstances to report a crime; the location of the crime or victims or the identity, description or location of the person who committed the crime.

Coroners, Medical Examiners and Funeral Directors: We may release medical information to a coroner or medical examiner. This may be necessary, for example, to identify a deceased person or determine the cause of death. We may also release medical information about patients to funeral directors as necessary to carry out their duties.

National Security and Intelligence Activities: We may release medical information about you to authorized federal officials for intelligence, counterintelligence, or other national security activities authorized by law.

Protective Services for the President and Others: We may disclose medical information about you to authorized federal officials so they may provide protection to the President, other authorized persons or foreign heads of state or conduct special investigations.

Inmates: If you are an inmate of a correctional institution or under the custody of a law enforcement official, we may release medical information about you to the correctional institution or law enforcement official. This release would be necessary (1) for the institution to provide you with health care; (2) to protect your health and safety or the health and safety of others; or (3) for the safety and security of the correctional institution.

Serious Threats. As permitted by applicable law and standards of ethical conduct, we may use and disclose protected health information if we, in good faith, believe that the use or disclosure is necessary to prevent or lesson a serious and imminent threat to the health or safety of a person or the public.

YOUR RIGHTS

1. You have the right to request restrictions on our uses and disclosures of protected health information for treatment, payment and health care operations. However, we are not required to agree to your request.
   
2. You have the right to reasonably request to receive communications of protected health information by alternative means or at alternative locations,
   
3. Subject to payment of a reasonable copying charge, you have the right to inspect and copy the protected health information contained in your medical and billing records and in any other records used by us to make decisions about you, except for:

   (i) psychotherapy notes, which are notes recorded by a mental health professional documenting or analyzing the contents of conversation during a private counseling session or a group, joint or family counseling session and that have been separated from the rest of your medical record;

   (ii) information compiled in reasonable anticipation of, or for use in, a civil, criminal, or administrative action or proceeding;

   (iii) protected health information involving laboratory tests when your access is required by law;

   (iv) if you are a prison inmate and obtaining such information would jeopardize your health, safety, security, custody, or rehabilitation or that of other inmates, or the safety of any officer, employee, or other person at the correctional institution or person responsible for transporting you;

   (v) your protected health information is contained in records kept by a federal agency or contractor when your access is required by law; and

   (vi) if the protected health information was obtained from someone other than us under a promise of confidentiality and the access requested would be reasonably likely to reveal the source of the information.

We may also deny a request for access to protected health information if:

• A licensed health care professional has determined, in the exercise of professional judgment, that the access requested is reasonably likely to endanger your life or physical safety or that of another person;
  
• The protected health information makes reference to another person (unless such other person is a health care provider) and a licensed health care professional has determined, in the exercise of professional judgment, that the access requested is reasonably likely to cause substantial harm to such other person; or
  
• The request for access is made by the individual's personal representative and a licensed health care professional has determined, in the exercise of professional judgment, that the provision of access to such personal representative is reasonably likely to cause substantial harm to you or another person.

If we deny a request for access for any of the three reasons described above, then you have the right to have our denial reviewed in accordance with the requirements of applicable law.

   4. You have the right to request a correction to your protected health information, but we may deny your request for        correction, if we determine that the protected health information or record that is the subject of the request:

(i) was not created by us, unless you provide a reasonable basis to believe that the originator of protected health information is no longer available to act on the requested amendment;

(ii) is not part of your medical or billing records;

(iii) is not available for inspection as set forth above; or

(iv) is accurate and complete.

In any event, any agreed upon correction will be included as an addition to, and not a replacement of, already existing records,

   5. You have the right to receive, an accounting of disclosures of protected health information made by us to individuals or        entities other than to you, except for disclosures:

(i) to carry out treatment, payment and health care operations as provided above;

(ii) to persons involved in your care or for other notification purposes as provided by law:

(iii) for national security or intelligence purposes as provided by law;

(v) to correctional institutions or law enforcement officials as provided by law; or

(vi) that occurred prior to April 14, 2003.

   6. You have the right to request and receive a paper copy of this notice from us.

COMPLAINTS
If you believe that your privacy rights have been violated, you should immediately contact Troy Burke, Quality Assurance Manager (978) 741-1770. We will not take action against you for filing a complaint. You also may file a complaint with the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

CONTACT PERSON
If you have any questions or would like further information about this notice, please contact Troy Burke, Quality Assurance Manager (978) 741-1770

This notice is effective as of October 16th, 2002.

Site Privacy Policy:
Hutchinson Medical, Inc. is committed to protecting your privacy. Therefore we:

• do not to collect your personal information without your knowledge and consent
  
• protect the privacy of any personal information you choose to provide to us
  
• will only use provided information for internal purposes and with your treating physician and/or insurance plans, unless we first notify you or are required to by law
  
• will notify you of our policies and procedures regarding your personal information with updates to this section of the website

Terms of Service
We may alter, suspend, or discontinue this web site in whole or in part, at any time and for any reason, without notice or cost. The web site may periodically become unavailable due to maintenance or malfunction of computer equipment or for other reasons.

The information on this web site is believed to be complete and reliable; however, the information may contain typographical errors, other inadvertent errors or inaccuracies. We reserve the right to make changes to prices, document names and content, product descriptions or specifications, or other information without obligation to issue any notice.

We make no representation that information on this web site is appropriate or available for use outside the United States. Those who choose to access this web site from outside the United States do so on their own initiative and are responsible for compliance with local laws, if and to the extent local laws are applicable.

No part of this web site may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, except when we authorize you to view, copy, download, and print posted documents (such as papers, forms, catalogs, and manuals) that are available on this web site, subject to the following conditions:

1. The documents may be used solely for internal informational purposes.
   
2. The documents may not be modified.
   
3. Copyright, trademark, and other proprietary notice may not be removed.

By using this web site, you agree to indemnify, hold harmless and defend us from any claims, damages, losses, liabilities, and all costs and expenses of defense, including but not limited to, attorneys' fees, resulting directly or indirectly from a claim by a third party that arises in connection with your use of this web site.

Unless otherwise noted, all text and images contained on this web site are the property of Hutchinson Medical, Inc. and/or its affiliates, subsidiaries, or licensors, and are protected from unauthorized copying and dissemination by United States copyright law, trademark law, international conventions and other intellectual property laws. Any other product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Our site contains links to third party links, if you leave Hutchinsonmedical.com by linking to a third party link, you will be subject to such third party's privacy policies and procedures and this Privacy Statement will no longer apply. Hutchinson Medical. Inc is not responsible for the content of third party links or the use, collection or dissemination of information on such third party links.

If any part of these Terms of Use is held to be unlawful, void, or unenforceable, that part will be deemed severable and shall not affect the validity and enforceability of the rest. These Terms of Use constitute the entire agreement between the parties relating to the subject matter herein. We may, at our sole discretion and without notice, revise these terms at any time by updating this posting.