Notice of Privacy Practices 

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) is a federal law designed to protect your privacy whenever your health care providers (like the Lactation Consultant) have to discuss your case, or send information about you to different offices. We have to keep a file to record our consult - but we promise that the private, protected health information in it will be kept confidential.

The Lactation Consultant can freely share all the details of your personal health information for purposes of "treatment, payment and health care operations." That means the lactation consultant can talk to you about your situation, and discuss it with your other health care providers. If you are referred to other specialists, the lactation consultant can send the information on to them. The lactation consultant can also share information with your health insurance company if they need it. 

The law also requires the lactation consultant to share your information under other, very precise situations: for example, if a subpoena has been served on this office, to turn over medical records or a federal agency is investigating a complaint that we have not been protecting your privacy.

Under HIPAA, the lactation consultant can call or write you to remind you to come back for an appointment, or to tell you how you can get a product or service that might interest you and your family.

You have four rights under HIPAA:

  1. Access (you can ask the lactation consultant to see all the protected health information (PHI) she has about you); 

  2. Amendment (you can ask the lactation consultant to change her files to amend inaccurate PHI); 

  3. Disclosure Accounting (you can ask to whom the lactation consultant has given your PHI) and 

  4. Restriction Request (you can put limits on the lactation consultant's use and sharing of your PHI).

If this notice is amended in the future, we will make a new copy available. The consent form you sign at a Lactation Consultation appointment, or at the Lactation Clinic acknowledges that you have access to this HIPAA Notice of Privacy Practice and have read and understood it.

You can complain if you think your privacy hasn’t been protected, and we have a duty to attempt to address the situation. If the Lactation Consultant does not address your complaint adequately, you can go to the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) of the federal Health and Human Services Dept., to ask that a formal investigation be made. You cannot be penalized for making a complaint. You can get all the details from them by calling (toll free) 1- 800-368-1019 or file a complaint at: http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/complaints/index.html