Notice of Privacy Practices

What this page is

The Notice of Privacy Practices is a document the practice issues and dates. It is not something a website can write on the practice's behalf, so this page does not try.

What follows is a plain summary: what that document covers, what it gives you, and how to get hold of it.

What the notice covers

Broadly, four things.

• How your health information is used inside the practice. To treat you, to bill for the work, and to run the office.
• When it can be shared without asking you first. Mostly this is where the law requires it.
• When the practice has to ask you first, and how you say no.
• What the practice owes you in return. To protect the information, to follow its own notice as written, to tell you if the notice changes, and to tell you if there is a breach of your information.

Why you are handed one

HIPAA — the federal health privacy law — requires a dental practice covered by it to give you this notice in writing, and to make a genuine effort to get you to sign that you received it. The requirement sits at 45 CFR § 164.520.

Signing says one thing only: the document reached your hands. It is not consent to treatment. It is not agreement with anything inside it. You are allowed to decline to sign.

Your rights over your dental record

These are yours by law.

• See it, and get a copy. You can ask to look at your dental record and the billing records that go with it, and to be given a copy.
• Ask for a correction. If something in the record is wrong or missing, you can ask for it to be amended. The practice can refuse. If it does, it has to tell you why in writing, and you can have your side of it filed alongside the record.
• Ask who has seen it. You can ask for a list of certain times your information was shared outside of treatment, billing and the running of the practice. Check the notice for how far back that list reaches.
• Get it on paper. You can ask for a paper copy of the notice at any time, for any reason, including after you have already signed for one. Reading it here does not use that up.

Asking us to handle it differently

Two rights sit slightly apart from the others, because they change what happens next rather than what you can see.

• Ask for a restriction. You can ask the practice to use or share less of your information than it otherwise would. It does not have to agree to every request. Check the notice for where it can say no.
• Say how you want to be reached. You can ask to be contacted a particular way, or at a particular address or number, if the usual way causes you a problem. You do not have to explain why.

Complaining, and what cannot happen to you

If you think your information was mishandled, you can raise it with the practice. You can also complain to the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. You can do both. Check the notice for the current details for each.

No one may retaliate against you or hold it against you because you raised it — and no one may ask you to sign away the right to complain as a condition of being treated.

How to get the full notice

Call the practice and ask for a copy.

(520) 214-2484 — Mon–Thu 9 AM–5 PM, Fri 8 AM–2 PM. Saturday and Sunday closed.

This is not the website privacy policy

Two different documents, doing two different jobs.

The Notice of Privacy Practices covers your health information as a patient — what is in your chart, your scans, your billing. It comes from federal law and the practice issues it.

The privacy policy covers something narrower: what this website does with your information, including what you type into it. Loading a page sends something too. Your browser fetches fonts and images from other companies' servers, and a map on the pages that show one, and those requests carry your IP address. None of that touches your dental record.

Neither one replaces the other, and neither one is a substitute for asking.

Talking to someone about it

The full notice sets out how to make each of these requests, and whether a given one has to be in writing. If you are not sure where to start, call and say plainly what you want — the practice's number and hours are on the contact page.