Our Responsibilities under the Federal Privacy Standard

In addition to providing you your rights as detailed above, the federal privacy standard requires us to take the following measures:

• Maintain the privacy of your health information, including implementing reasonable and appropriate safeguards to protect the information.
• Provide you this notice as to our legal duties and privacy practices with respect to the information that we collect and maintain about you.
• Abide by the terms of this notice that is currently in effect.
• Train our personnel concerning privacy and confidentiality.
• Implement a sanction policy to discipline those who breach privacy or confidentiality or our policies with regard thereto.
• Mitigate (lessen the harm of) any breach of privacy or confidentiality.
• Use or disclose your information only with your consent or authorization except as described in this notice or as allowed by law. Kansas Law (K.S.A. 65-5601 through 65-5605, inclusive, and amendments) sets forth fourteen exceptions when mental health centers may disclose records without your authorization or the authorization of your parent or guardian. In summary statements, those exceptions are as follows:
  
  1. Information relevant to involuntary commitment proceedings.
  2. Information in response to a court order for mental, alcoholic, or drug evaluation.
  3. Information relevant to legal proceedings when the patient has relied upon his or her mental, alcoholic, drug dependence, or emotional condition as a claim or defense, and a judge has entered an order and specified the person(s) who are to receive the information.
  4. Information which treatment personnel are "required by law to report to a public official". This includes, but may not be limited to, mandatory reporting of such things as suspected child abuse.
  5. Information which is needed for the emergency treatment of a patient after a written statement by the Executive Director or his designee states the reasons for disclosure of the information.
  6. Information which is needed to protect a person who has been threatened with substantial harm by a patient during the course of treatment.
  7. Information from a state psychiatric hospital to the Department of Corrections for the purpose of transfer.
  8. Information to the patient or former patient except that the Executive Director or his designee may refuse to disclose portions of records following a written statement that such disclosure would be injurious to the patient.
  9. Information to accreditation, certification, and licensing authorities, including scholarly investigators, after a written pledge that the information will not be disclosed to any other person not otherwise authorized by law to receive such information.
  10. Information requested by the Kansas Advocacy and Protective Services concerning the representation of individuals who reside in a treatment facility.
  11. Information needed to pursue collection of a bill for services rendered.
  12. Information sought by a coroner serving under the laws of Kansas when such information is material to an investigation or proceeding conducted by the coroner.
  13. Information and communication between or among treatment facilities regarding a proposed patient, or former patient, for purposes of promoting continuity of care between the state psychiatric hospital and the community mental health centers.
  14. The name, date of birth, name of any next of kin, and place of residence of a deceased former patient when that information is sought as part of a genealogical study.