We may use medical information about you to provide you with medical treatment or services. We may disclose medical information about you to doctors, nurses, technicians, medical students, or other Medical Center personnel who are involved in taking care of you. For example, a doctor treating you for a broken leg may need to know if you have diabetes, because diabetes may slow the healing process. In addition, the doctor may need to tell the dietician if you have diabetes so that we can arrange for appropriate meals. Different departments of the Medical Center also may share medical information about you in order to coordinate the different things you need, such as prescriptions, lab work and x-rays. We also may disclose medical information about you to people outside the Medical Center who may be involved in your medical care.
We may use and disclose medical information about you so that we may bill for treatment and services you receive at the Medical Center and can collect payment from you, an insurance company or another party. For example, we may need to give information about surgery you received at the Medical Center to your health plan so that the plan will pay us or reimburse you for the surgery. We may also tell your health plan about a treatment you are going to receive in order to obtain prior approval or to determine whether your plan will cover the treatment. We may also disclose information about you to other healthcare facilities for purposes of payment as permitted by law.
We may use and disclose medical information about you for operations of the Medical Center. These uses and disclosures are necessary to run the Medical Center and make sure that all of our patients receive quality care. For example, we may use medical information to evaluate the performance of our staff in caring for you. We may also combine medical information about many patients to decide what additional services the Medical Center should offer, what services are not needed, and whether certain new treatments are effective. We may also disclose information to doctors, nurses, technicians, medical students, and other Medical Center personnel for educational purposes. We may also combine medical information we have with medical information from other hospitals to compare our performance and to make improvements in the care and services we offer. We may also disclose information about you to other healthcare facilities as permitted by law.
We may use and disclose medical information to contact you to remind you that you have an appointment for treatment or medical care.