We may use and disclose medical information about you to obtain payment for healthcare services that you received. This means that, within the pharmacy, we may use medical information about you to arrange for payment (such as preparing bills and managing accounts). We may also disclose medical information about you to others (such as insurers, collection agencies, and consumer reporting agencies). In some instances, we may disclose medical information about you to an insurance plan before you receive certain healthcare services; for example, we may need to know whether the insurance plan will pay for a particular service.

We may use and disclose medical information about you in performing a variety of business activities that we call “healthcare operations.” These “healthcare operations” allow us to improve the quality of care we provide and reduce healthcare costs. For example, we may use or disclose medical information about you in performing the following activities:

• Reviewing and evaluating the skills, qualifications, and performance of healthcare providers taking care of you.
• Providing training programs for students, trainees, healthcare providers or non-healthcare professionals to help them practice or improve their skills.
• Cooperating with outside organizations that evaluate, certify or license healthcare providers, or staff of facilities in a particular field or specialty.
• Reviewing and improving the quality, efficiency, and cost of care that we provide to you and our other patients.
• Improving healthcare and lowering costs for groups of people who have similar health problems, and helping manage and coordinate the care for these groups of people.
• Cooperating with outside organizations that assess the quality of the care we provide, and others including government agencies and private organizations.
• Planning for our organizations future operations.
• Resolving grievances within our organization.
• Reviewing our activities and using or disclosing medical information in the event that control of our organization significantly changes.
• Working with others (such as lawyers, accountants and other providers) who assist us to comply with this notice and other applicable laws.

We may disclose medical information about you to a relative, a close personal friend, or any other person you identify if that person is involved in your care and the information is relevant to your care. If the patient is a minor, we may disclose medical information about the minor to a parent, guardian or other person responsible for the minor except in limited circumstances. For more information on the privacy of minors’ information, contact our Privacy Officer at (866)-367-8701.

We may also use or disclose medical information about you to a relative, another person involved in your care or possibly a disaster relief organization if we need to notify someone about your location or condition. You may ask us at any time not to disclose medical information about you to persons involved in your care. We will agree to your request and not disclose the information except in certain limited circumstances (such as emergencies) or if the patient is a minor. If the patient is a minor, we may or may not be able to agree to your request.

We will use and disclose medical information about you whenever we are required by law to do so. There are many state and federal laws that require us to use and disclose medical information. For example, state law requires us to report gunshot wounds and other injuries to the police and to report known or suspected child abuse or neglect to the Department of Social Services. We will comply with those state laws and with all other applicable laws.

When permitted by law, we may use or disclose medical information about you without your permission for various activities that are recognized as “national priorities.” In other words, the government has determined that under certain circumstances (described below), it is so important to disclose medical information that it is acceptable to disclose medical information without the individual’s permission. We will only disclose medical information about you in the following circumstances when we are permitted to do so by law. Below are brief descriptions of the “national priority” activities recognized by law. For more information on these types of disclosures, contact our Privacy Officer at (866) 367-8701.

• Threat to Health or Safety: We may use or disclose medical information about you if we believe it is necessary to prevent or lessen a serious threat to health or safety.
• Public Health Activities: We may use ore disclose medical information about you for public health activities. Public health activities require the use of medical information for various activities, including, but not limited to, activities related to investigating diseases, reporting child abuse and neglect, monitoring drugs or devices regulated by the FDA, and monitoring work-related illnesses or injuries. For example, if you have been exposed to a communicable disease (such as a sexually transmitted disease), we may report it to the State and take other actions to prevent the spread of the disease.
• Abuse, Neglect or Domestic Violence: We may disclose medical information about you to a government authority (such as the Department of Social Services) if you are an adult and we reasonably believe that you may be a victim of abuse, neglect or domestic violence.
• Health Oversight Activities: We may disclose medical information about you to a health oversight agency. For example, a government agency may request information from us while they are investigating possible insurance fraud.
• Court Proceedings: We may disclose medical information about you to a officer of the court (such as an attorney). For example, we would disclose medical information about you to a court if a judge orders us to do so.
• Law Enforcement: We may disclose medical information about you to a law enforcement official for specific law enforcement purposes. For example, we may disclose limited medical information about you to a police officer if the officer needs the information to help find or identify a missing person.
• Coroners and others: We may disclose medical information about you to a coroner, medical examiner, or funeral director or to organizations that help with organ, eye and tissue transplants.
• Workers’ compensation: We may disclose medical information about you in order to comply with workers’ compensation laws.
• Research Organizations: We may use or disclose medical information about you to research organizations if the organization has satisfied certain conditions about protecting the privacy of the medical information.
• Certain Government Functions: We may use or disclose medical information about you for certain government functions, including but not limited to military and veterans’ activities and national security and intelligence activities. We may also use or disclose medical information about you to a correctional institution in some circumstances.

Other than the uses and disclosures described above (#1-6), we will not use or disclose medical information about you without the “authorization” or signed permission of you or your personal representative. In some instances, we may wish to use or disclose medical information about you and we may contact you to ask you to sign an authorization form. In other instances, you may contact us to ask us to disclose medical information and we will ask you to sign an authorization form.

If you sign a written authorization allowing us to disclose medical information about you, you may later revoke your authorization in writing (except in very limited circumstances related to obtaining insurance coverage). If you would like to revoke your authorization, you may write us a letter revoking your authorization or fill out an Authorization Revocation Form. Authorization Revocation Forms are available from our Privacy Officer. If you revoke your authorization, we will follow your instructions except to the extent that we have already relied upon your authorization and taken some action. The following uses and disclosures of medical information about you will only be made with your authorization (signed permission):

• Uses and disclosures for marketing purposes.
• Uses and disclosures that constitute the sale of medical information about you.
• Most uses and disclosures of psychotherapy notes, if we maintain psychotherapy notes.
• Any other uses and disclosures not described in this Notice.