Privacy is an important principle to the St. Lawrence Chiropractic Clinic. We are committed to collecting, using and disclosing personal information responsibly and only to the extent necessary for the services we provide. We also try to be open and transparent as to how we handle personal information. This document describes our privacy policy.
WHO WE ARE?
The St. Lawrence Chiropractic Clinic provides quality professional health care for all members of your family, and all life stages. We provide chiropractic treatment, registered massage therapy, orthotics, and other complementary modalities. When providing services to you, we restrict access to any personal information we hold as much as is reasonably possible, and always on a need-to-know basis.
HOW WE USE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION
Like all health care providers, we collect, use, and disclose personal information in order to serve our patients. The primary purpose is to create a file relating to our patients, both electronic (billing and accounting) and paper (clinical data). The electronic information will be used to submit details of your clinical visits to the St. Lawrence Chiropractic Clinic to Extended Healthcare Insurance Companies in order to be paid for services rendered.
Clinical reports may be forwarded to other parties including other health practitioners, insurers and assessment agencies with your consent.
Personal information may include personal characteristics such as:
- Name
- Home contact information
- Identification number (e.g. OHIP number)
- Insurance benefit coverage
- Gender
- Age / date of birth
- Education or training
- Marital status
It may also include health-related information such as:
- Health history
- Health measurements, samples or examination results
- Health conditions, assessment results, diagnoses
- Health services provided to or received by the person
- Health information collected in the course of providing services
- Prognosis or other opinions formed during assessment and treatment
- Compliance with assessment and treatment
- Reasons for discharge and discharge condition and recommendations
We may also collect other types of information including:
- Transaction history with the organization
- Occupation/profession
- Opinions expressed by the person
- Community involvements
- Work hours
- Existence of a dispute with the organization
- Letters written to the organization by the person
- Views, evaluations or opinions by the organization about the person
SECONDARY USE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION
Like most health care providers, we also collect, use and disclose information for the secondary purpose of informing and promoting to patients our services and benefits. This may occur from time-to-time and involve the use of telephone, mail or electronic media. We do not use outside parties for marketing the St. Lawrence Chiropractic Clinic and we do not disclose, sell or share personal information about our patients.
PROTECTING PERSONAL INFORMATION
We understand the importance of protecting personal information. For that reason, we have taken the following steps to ensure the confidentiality and security of your information:
- Paper information is kept under supervision during patient contact hours
- Electronic hardware is under supervision
- Paper information is transmitted through sealed, addressed envelopes or boxes by reputable companies
- Electronic information is transmitted either through a direct line or is anonymized or encrypted.
- Staff are trained to collect, use and disclose personal information only as necessary to fulfill their duties and in accordance with our privacy policy.
- External consultants and agencies with access to personal information must enter into privacy agreements with us.
RETENTION AND DESTRUCTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION
We need to retain personal information for some time to ensure that we can answer any questions you might have about the services provided and for our own accountability to external regulatory bodies. We keep our client files for a minimum period of six years as governed by the College of Chiropractors of Ontario. Destruction of documents will occur by shredding when no further contact has been made for six years or longer. Electronic information is retained indefinitely as these is much more difficult in how to selectively delete/destroy. We remove such information when we can if it appears we will not be contacting you again. However, if you request it, we will remove such contact information as soon as possible. We keep information relating to general correspondence with people who are not our clients (newsletters, email, marketing) for six years. Electronic information or discarded equipment is deleted and/or physically destroyed in a secure manner.
YOU CAN LOOK AT YOUR INFORMATION
With only a few exceptions, you have the right to see what personal information we hold about your. Often, all you have do to is ask. We can help you identify what records we might have about you. We will also try to help you understand any information you do not understand (e.g. short forms, technical language, etc.). We will need to confirm your identity, if we do not know you, before providing you with this access. We reserve the right to charge a nominal fee for such requests ($15/ hr of staff time).
If there is a problem we may ask you to put your request in writing. If we cannot give you access, we will tell you within 30 days if at all possible and tell you the reason, as best we can, as to why we cannot give you access.
If you believe there is a mistake in the information, you have the right to ask for it to be corrected. This applies to factual information and not to any professional opinions we may have formed. We may ask you to provide documentation that our files are wrong. Where we agree that we made a mistake, we will make the correction and notify anyone to whom we sent this information. If we do not agree that we have made a mistake, we will still agree to include in our file a brief statement from you on the point and we will forward that statement to anyone else who received the earlier information.
DO YOU HAVE A CONCERN?
These policies are available in writing and on our website (privacy-policy.pdf).
If you wish to make a formal complaint about our privacy practices, you may make it in writing to Kelly Schuller. She will acknowledge receipt of your complaint, ensure that it is investigated promptly and that you are provided with a formal response.
For more general inquiries, the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario oversees the administration of privacy legislation in the Province of Ontario. For more information, please visit the website of the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner/Ontario.