MISSION STATEMENT
Acushnet EMS is dedicated to
providing 24-hour quality pre-hospital emergency medical care to the residents
and visitors of Acushnet, Massachusetts. Highly trained providers of advanced
and basic life support strive to provide the most effective and compassionate
care to every person they encounter by working collaboratively with our partners
– local hospital, regional and state regulators -- to maintain the highest level
of training, evaluation and operational readiness. Through the commitment of
the residents of Acushnet we possess first rate equipment and tools that allow
us to provide exceptional care.
Acushnet Emergency Medical Services Staff Listing:
Chief of Department:
Fulltime EMT- Paramedics:
-
James Baptiste
-
Richard Gunter
-
Michael Mentzer
Part-time EMT-Paramedics:
-
Valarie Andrade-Higgins
-
Joseph Flynn
-
Shawn Samanica
-
Andrew Lavoie
-
William Roderiques
-
Phil Saraiva
-
Laurie Gonsalves
-
Priscilla Braley
-
John Harrell
-
Paul Correia
-
Brian Donahoe
-
Jeff Dupuis
-
Timothy Guillotte
-
John Pytel
Part-time EMT- Basics
TOWN OF ACUSHNET
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.
Purpose of this
Notice: The Town of Acushnet
(“Town”) is required by law to maintain the privacy of certain confidential
health care information, known as Protected Health Information PHI, and to
provide you with a notice of our legal duties and privacy practices with respect
to your PHI. This Notice describes
your legal rights, advises you of our privacy practices, and lets you know how
the Town is permitted to use and disclose to you.
The Town is also required to abide by the terms of this
Notice currently in effect. In most
situations we may use this information as described in this Notice without your
permission, but there are some situations where we may use it only after we
obtain your written authorization, if we are required by law to do so.
Uses and
Disclosures of PHI: The Town may use PHI for the purposes of treatment,
payment, and health care operations, in most cases without your written
permission.
Examples of our use of your PHI:
- For treatment.
This includes such things as verbal and written information that we
obtain about you and use pertaining to your medical condition and treatment
provided to you by us and other medical personnel (including doctors and
nurses who give orders to allow us to provide treatment to you).
It also includes information we give to other health care personnel
to whom we transfer your care and treatment, and includes transfer of PHI
via radio or telephone to the hospital or dispatch center as well as
providing the hospital with a copy of the written record we create in the
course of providing you with treatment and transport.
- For payment.
This includes any activities we must undertake in order to get
reimbursed for the Ambulance Services we provide to you, including such
things as organizing your PHI and submitting bills to insurance companies
(either directly or through a third party billing company), management of
billed claims for services rendered, medical necessity determinations and
reviews, utilization review, and collection of outstanding accounts.
- For health care operations.
This includes quality assurance activities, licensing, and training
programs to ensure that our personnel meet our standards of care and follow
established policies and procedures, obtaining legal and financial services,
conducting business planning, processing grievances and complaints, creating
reports that do not individually identify you for data collection purposes,
fundraising, and certain marketing activities.
Use and Disclosure of PHI Without Your Authorization.
The Town is permitted to use PHI without
your written authorization, or opportunity to object in certain situations
including:
- For the Town’s use in obtaining payment for services
provided to you or in other health care operations;
- For the treatment activities of another health care
provider;
- To another health care provider or entity for the
payment activities of the provider or entity that receives the information
(such as your hospital or insurance company);
- To another health care provider (such as the hospital
to which you are transported) for the health care operations activities of
the entity that receives the information as long as the entity receiving the
information has or has had a relationship with you and the PHI pertains to
that relationship;
- For health care fraud and abuse detection or for
activities related to compliance with the law;
- To a family member, other relative, or close personal
friend or other individual involved in your care if we obtain your verbal
agreement to do so or if we give you an opportunity to object to such a
disclosure and you do not raise an objection.
We may also disclose health information to your family, relatives,
or friends if we infer from the circumstances that you would not object.
For example, we may assume you agree
to our disclosure of your personal health information to your spouse when
your spouse has called the ambulance for you.
In situations where you are not capable of objecting (because you are
not present or due to your incapacity or medical emergency), we may, in our
professional judgment, determine that a disclosure to your family member,
relative, or friend is in your best interest.
In that situation, we will disclose only health information relevant
to that person's involvement in your care. For
example, we may inform the person who accompanied you in the ambulance that
you have certain symptoms and we may give that person an update on your
vital signs and treatment that is being administered by our ambulance crew;
- To a public health authority in certain situations
(such as reporting a birth, death or disease as required by law, as part of
a public health investigation, to report child or adult abuse or neglect or
domestic violence, to report adverse events such as product defects, or to
notify a person about exposure to a possible communicable disease as
required by law;
- For health oversight activities including audits or
government investigations, inspections, disciplinary proceedings, and other
administrative or judicial actions undertaken by the government (or their
contractors) by law to oversee the health care system;
- For judicial and administrative proceedings as
required by a court or administrative order, or in some cases in response to
a subpoena or other legal process;
- For law enforcement activities in limited situations,
such as when there is a warrant for the request, or when the information is
needed to locate a suspect or stop a crime;
- For military, national defense and security and other
special government functions;
- To avert a serious threat to the health and safety of
a person or the public at large;
- For workers' compensation purposes, and in compliance
with workers’ compensation laws;
- To coroners, medical examiners, and funeral directors
for identifying a deceased person, determining cause of death, or carrying
on their duties as authorized by law;
- If you are an organ donor, we may release health
information to organizations that handle organ procurement or organ, eye or
tissue transplantation or to an organ donation bank, as necessary to
facilitate organ donation and transplantation;
- For research projects, but this will be subject to
strict oversight and approvals and health information will be released only
when there is a minimal risk to your privacy and adequate safeguards are in
place in accordance with the law;
- We may use or disclose health information about you in
a way that does not personally identify you or reveal who you are.
Any other use or disclosure of PHI, other than those listed
above will only be made with your written authorization, (the authorization must
specifically identify the information we seek to use or disclose, as well as
when and how we seek to use or disclose it).
You may revoke your
authorization at any time, in writing, except to the extent that we have already
used or disclosed medical information in reliance on that authorization.
Patient Rights: As a patient, you have a number of
rights with respect to the protection of your PHI, including:
The right to access, copy or inspect your PHI. This means
you may come to our offices and inspect and copy most of the medical information
about you that we maintain. We will normally provide you with access to this
information within 30 days of your request. We
may also charge you a reasonable fee for you to copy any medical information
that you have the right to access.
In limited circumstances, we may deny you access to your medical information,
and you may appeal certain types of denials.
We have available forms to request access to
your PHI and we will provide a written response if we deny you access and let
you know your appeal rights. If you wish to inspect and copy your medical
information, you should contact the privacy officer listed at the end of this
Notice.
The right to amend your PHI.
You have the right to ask us to amend written medical information that we
may have about you. We will
generally amend your information within 60 days of your request and will notify
you when we have amended the information. We
are permitted by law to deny your request to amend your medical information only
in certain circumstances, like when we believe the information you have asked us
to amend is correct. If you wish to
request that we amend the medical information that we have about you, you should
contact the privacy officer listed at the end of this Notice.
The right to request an accounting of our
use and disclosure of your PHI.
You may request an accounting from us of certain disclosures of your medical
information that we have made in the last six years prior to the date of your
request. We are not required to give you
an accounting of information we have used or disclosed for purposes of
treatment, payment or health care operations, or when we share your health
information with our business associates, like our billing company or a medical
facility from/to which we have transported you.
We are also not required to give you an
accounting of our uses of protected health information for which you have
already given us written authorization. If
you wish to request an accounting of the medical information about you that we
have used or disclosed that is not exempted from the accounting requirement, you
should contact the privacy officer listed at the end of this Notice.
The
right to request that we restrict the uses and disclosures of your PHI.
You have the right to request that we
restrict how we use and disclose your medical information that we have about you
for treatment, payment or health care operations, or to restrict the information
that is provided to family, friends and other individuals involved in your
health care. But if you request a restriction and the information you asked us
to restrict is needed to provide you with emergency treatment, then we may use
the PHI or disclose the PHI to a health care provider to provide you with
emergency treatment. The Ambulance Service is not required to agree to any
restrictions you request, but any restrictions agreed to by the Ambulance
Service are binding on the Ambulance Service.
Internet, Electronic Mail, and the Right to
Obtain Copy of Paper Notice on Request. The
Town will prominently post a copy of this Notice on our web site and make the
Notice available electronically through the web site.
If you request, we will forward you this Notice by electronic mail
instead of on paper and you may always request a paper copy of the Notice.
Revisions to the Notice.
The Town reserves the right to change the
terms of this Notice at any time, and the changes will be effective immediately
and will apply to all protected health information that we maintain.
Any material changes to the Notice will be promptly posted in our
facilities and posted to our website.
You can get a copy of the latest version of this Notice by contacting the
Privacy Official below.
Your Legal Rights and Complaints.
You also have the right to complain to us, or to the Secretary of the
United States Department of Health and Human Services if you believe your
privacy rights have been violated.
You will not be retaliated against in any way for filing a complaint with us or
to the government. Should you have any questions, comments or complaints you may
direct all inquiries to the privacy officer listed at the end of this Notice.
Individuals will not be retaliated against for filing a complaint.
If you have any questions or if you wish to file a
complaint or exercise any rights listed in this Notice, please contact the
Town’s HIPAA Privacy Official:
Fire / EMS Chief
Acushnet EMS
60 Middle Road
Acushnet,
MA 02743
508-998-0235
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