Confidentiality & Privacy

The Student Health Services Program maintains a strict confidentiality and privacy policy to protect your medical information. For more details regarding our policies, please see our Confidentiality Statement and Notice of Privacy Practices below.

Confidentiality Statement

We provide our students who use Student Health Services a right to privacy. Your Protected Health Information (PHI) is confidential and is not part of your academic record. No one on campus has a right to see your PHI or know that you are receiving treatment without your written permission. There are legal expectations to our practices in maintaining confidentiality, which can be seen in our Notice of Privacy Practices. Apart from these expectations, only the staff of Student Health Services may access your medical information.

Notice of Privacy Practices

The Student Health Center is a confidential clinic and the privacy of each student’s Protected Health Information (PHI) is maintained. With the exception of Student Health Center staff, and specifically for noted legal exceptions, PHI is not accessible to anyone without your written permission.

The law allows the Student Health Center to use or disclose health information for treatment, payment, health care operations, notification/communication with family (in emergency circumstances), and health oversight activities. (A paper copy of a full explanation is available upon request).

Explanation of Specific Exceptions:

The law allows us to use or disclose your PHI without your written authorization for the following purposes:

  1. Required by law: The law requires us to report abuse, neglect or domestic violence, respond to judicial or administrative proceedings (e.g. subpoenas), or to law enforcement officers (e.g. court orders).
  2. Public health: On occasion, the law requires us to report a student’s health information to public health authorities for reasons related to preventing or controlling disease, injury or disability, reporting abuse or neglect, reporting problems with products and reactions to medications to the Food and Drug Administration, and reporting disease or infection exposure.
  3. Worker’s Compensation: We may disclose health information as necessary to comply with worker’s compensation laws. In the case of employees, we report work-related injuries to the district business office. In the case of students, this may occur with incidents that occur during a class activity and for employees with work-related injuries both of which we will report to the district business office.

Student Rights

You will have these rights when using the Student Health Center.

  1. Right to Request Special Privacy Protections:
    You have the right to request restrictions on certain uses and disclosures of your health information. We reserve the right to accept or reject these requests and will notify you of our decision.
  2. Right to Request Confidential Communications:
    You have the right to request your health information in a specific way or at a specific location. (You may want us to call and leave messages on your cell phone only.) We will comply with reasonable requests submitted in writing.
  3. Right to Inspect and Copy:
    You have the right to inspect or copy your health information. The health center may charge you a standard duplicating fee. Your health records will be destroyed 7-10 years after your last visit here (we save records containing immunizations for ten years). There may be limited circumstances for which we would deny your request for access, and we will discuss this decision with you at the time of your request.
  4. Right to Amend or Supplement:
    You have the right to amend health information that you believe to be incorrect or incomplete. We reserve the right to deny your request. At your request for amendment, we will review the amendment process.
  5. Right to Accounting of Disclosures:
    You have the right to receive an accounting of certain types of disclosures of the PHI we have made.
  6. Right to Paper Copy of Notice of Privacy Practices:

    You have the right to a paper copy of the Notice of Privacy Practices.

Download Authorization to Release Health Information Form

Complaints

If you are concerned that the Student Health Center has violated your privacy rights, or if you disagree with a decision made about access to your records, you may contact our privacy officer Jo Buczko, Coordinator (or her appointed designee). You can also send a written complaint to the Secretary of Health and Human Services.