Notice of Privacy Practices

How we may use and disclose your information

We may use and disclose your health information in the following ways:

• Treatment. We use your information to provide, coordinate, and manage your dental care, including sharing it with other providers involved in your treatment, such as a specialist or dental laboratory.
• Payment. We may use and disclose your information to bill and collect payment for the care we provide, for example when we verify coverage or file a claim with your insurance plan.
• Health care operations. We may use your information for our normal business activities, such as quality review, staff training, appointment reminders, and scheduling.
• Appointment reminders and follow-up. We may contact you by phone, text, or email to remind you of an appointment or to follow up about your care, using the contact details you provide.

Other permitted or required disclosures

We may use or disclose your information without your written authorization when the law requires or permits it, for example for public health activities, to report suspected abuse or neglect, for health oversight, in response to a valid court order or subpoena, to avert a serious threat to health or safety, or for workers' compensation as authorized by law.

Uses and disclosures not described in this notice, including most uses of psychotherapy notes, marketing, and any sale of your information, will be made only with your written authorization. You may revoke that authorization in writing at any time, and we will stop using your information for those purposes going forward.

Your rights regarding your health information

You have the following rights with respect to your protected health information:

• Access. You may inspect and request a copy of your dental and billing records, in most cases within 30 days of your request. We may charge a reasonable, cost-based fee.
• Amendment. You may ask us to correct information you believe is incorrect or incomplete. We may deny the request in certain cases and will explain why in writing.
• Accounting of disclosures. You may request a list of certain disclosures we made of your information.
• Restrictions. You may ask us to limit how we use or disclose your information. We will try to honor reasonable requests and must honor a request to restrict disclosure to a health plan for care you paid for in full out of pocket.
• Confidential communications. You may ask us to contact you in a specific way or at a specific location, and we will accommodate reasonable requests.
• Paper copy. You may request a paper copy of this notice at any time, even if you agreed to receive it electronically.
• Breach notification. You have the right to be notified if there is a breach of your unsecured health information.

Our responsibilities

We are required to maintain the privacy of your health information, to provide you this notice of our legal duties and privacy practices, to notify you if a breach affects your unsecured information, and to follow the terms of the notice currently in effect.

We reserve the right to change this notice and to make the revised notice effective for information we already have as well as information we receive in the future. The current notice will always be posted on this page with its effective date.

How to reach us or file a complaint

If you have questions about this notice or want to exercise any of your rights, please contact our Privacy Officer at Smile Studio Boston, 137 South St, 2nd Floor, Boston, MA 02111, or call (617) 362-8032.

If you believe your privacy rights have been violated, you may file a complaint with our office or with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights. We will not retaliate against you for filing a complaint.