PRIVACY POLICIES AND PRACTICES

SMBP subscribes to and adheres to all local, state and federal privacy laws regarding your medical information. For the complete HIPAA Privacy Act laws view the summary below or the full text version.

HIPAA - SUMMARY NOTICE OF PRIVACY PRACTICES

We are required by federal law to provide you with a Notice of Privacy Practices that describes how medical information that we maintain about you may be used or disclosed. The Notice describes how, when, and why we use and disclose medical information about you, and provides a description of your rights and our obligations under federal and state privacy laws.

USES AND DISCLOSURES

We are permitted to use and disclose your health information under a variety of circumstances. Sometimes we must obtain your authorization before we use or disclose that information, but in other circumstances we may use your information without your authorization and without informing you of the use or disclosure. Some of the reasons that we may use or disclose your information include:

• To provide information about your health condition to other health care providers who may treat you;
• To provide information about the treatment that we provided in order to obtain payment from your health plan;
• To report a communicable disease, or meet other legal reporting requirements; or 
• To comply with a court order requiring the disclosure of your medical record.

These examples are merely illustrative. For a full description of the uses and disclosures that we are permitted to make, please consult the full Notice of Privacy Practices.

YOUR RIGHTS

While the records that we maintain about you belong to us, under the federal privacy law you have a variety of rights with respect to the information maintained in those records. For instance, you have the right to access and receive a copy of the medical information we maintain about you and to request that we amend any of the information that you believe is incomplete or incorrect. Also, you may request that we provide you with a list of disclosures that we have made of your medical information. All of these rights are subject to some exceptions that are described in full in the Notice of Privacy Practices.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

You will be asked to sign an acknowledgement of your receipt of this Notice of Privacy Practices. However, your receipt of care and treatment is not conditioned upon your signing the acknowledgement form.

OUR OBLIGATIONS

We are required to provide you with our Notice of Privacy Practices and to abide by its terms. We may change the Notice from time to time. Our full Notice of Privacy Practices is also available from the front desk staff of your doctor's office, from our Customer Service Department, and on our web (the full text version.)  Please read the full notice carefully. If you have any questions or require additional information, please contact our Customer Service Department at 

(310) 417-5959, or via e-mail at customerservice@smbp.com.

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