NOTICE OF PRIVACY PRACTICES THIS NOTICE DESCRIBES HOW MEDICAL INFORMATION ABOUT YOU MAY BE USED AND DISCLOSED AND HOW YOU CAN GET ACCESS TO THIS INFORMATION. PLEASE REVIEW IT CAREFULLY. We respect our legal obligation to keep health information that identifies you private. We are obligated by law to give you notice of our privacy practices. This Notice describes how we protect your health information and what rights you have regarding it. TREATMENT, PAYMENT, AND HEALTH CARE OPERATIONS The most common reason why we use or disclose your health information is for treatment, payment or health care operations. Examples of how we use or disclose onformation for treatment purposes are: setting up an appointment for you; testing or examining your eyes;prescribing glasses, contact lenses, or eye medications and faxing or calling them in to be filled; showing you low vision aids; referring you to another doctor or clinic for eye care or low vision aids or services; or getting copies of your health information from another professional that you may have seen before us. Examples of how we disclose or use your health information for payment purposes are: asking you about your health or vision care plans, or other sources of payment; preparing and sending bills or claims; and collecting unpaid amounts(either ourselves or through a collection agency or attorney). "Health care operations" mean those administrative and managerial functions that we have to do in order to run our office. Examples of how we use or disclose your health information for health care operations are: financial or billing audits; internal quality assurance; personnel decisions; participation in managed care plans; defense of legal matters; business planning; and outside storage of our records. We routinely use your health information inside our office for these purposes without any special permission. If we need to disclose your health information outside of our office for these reasons we usually will not ask you for written permission. We will ask for permission in the following situation(s): release of a prescription for glasses or contacts to another eye care professional, release of exam or medical testing history to another eye care professional. We will require you to sign a record release form before sending any information out.