Access Therapy - Clinic & Professional Policies
Clinic Policies
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All clients must virtually sign consent forms through our EMR system, Jane. Verbal consent is insufficient for accessing services at Access Therapy, and you must still sign the digital consent form.
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Payment is accepted by credit card or e-transfer and must be paid within 24 hours of the appointment. Services will not be permitted to continue if there is an outstanding balance on your account. In this event, any session bookings will be cancelled until the outstanding balance is paid in full.
Many extended health insurance plans cover mental health services while others do not. As such, we do not bill insurance companies directly. It is the client’s responsibility to check with their insurance provider in advance to determine their eligibility for coverage of a Registered Social Worker or Registered Psychotherapist.
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We require 48 hours notice for any cancellations or changes to your session. Clients who provide less than 48 hours notice, or miss their session, will be charged for the full cost of the session.
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You have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. We are obligated by the Personal Health Information and Protection Act (PHIPA) to document the withdrawal and the reason for the change within your Access Therapy chart.
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At Access Therapy, we recognize that substances like alcohol and drugs are often used as coping mechanisms for stress and emotional challenges. While we understand the complexity of these situations, we must emphasize that attending therapy sessions while impaired by drugs or alcohol is not encouraged, whenever possible.
The effectiveness of therapy relies on clear communication and engagement, both of which can be significantly impaired by these substances. As such, we ask clients to refrain from attending sessions in this state. If your goal is to reduce reliance on these substances, then we will work collaboratively towards finding different coping strategies. If you find it challenging to attend sessions sober, we encourage you to discuss this openly with your therapist. Together, we can develop a plan that supports your well-being and therapeutic goals.
This policy is in place to protect your therapeutic progress and ensure that our time together is productive and meaningful.
If you arrive at an in-person session while impaired by drugs or alcohol and have driven yourself, your therapist will arrange for alternate transportation to ensure your safe return home. Please note that any associated transportation fees (e.g., taxi costs) will be your responsibility.
Your safety and the safety of others are our top priorities. Therefore, in these situations, any necessary breach of confidentiality will be justified to protect you and the community. We appreciate your understanding and cooperation in this matter.
Professional Policies
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Our Privacy Commitment to You
We are committed to protecting your privacy and ensuring the confidentiality of your personal health information.
The types of personal health information we collect may include your name, date of birth, health history, and records of the care provided to you.
We collect, use and disclose personal health information for the following purposes:
to provide psychotherapy and counselling to our clients
to conduct quality improvement and risk management activities
to obtain payment for services provided (from you, OHIP, WSIB, your private insurer or others)
to comply with our regulatory obligations to [CRPO and OCSWSSW]
to teach students and to provide continuing education to our staff
to advise clients about special events or opportunities (but we will always obtain express consent to do so)
We will collect, use and disclose only as much personal health information as is needed to achieve these purposes. You can withhold or withdraw your consent to the collection, use or disclosure of your personal health information by contacting us (details below).
Access to Health Records
You have the right to seek access to your health records that we keep and to ask us to correct a record if you believe it is inaccurate or incomplete. Please contact us for more information.
Questions or Concerns?
If you have questions or want to make a complaint about our privacy practices, please contact: Arijana Palme at 289-432-1109 or admin@accesstherapy.ca
You also have the right to complain to the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario at the address below if you have concerns about our privacy practices or how your personal health information has been handled:
Information and Privacy Commissioner/Ontario
2 Bloor Street East, Suite 1400
Toronto, Ontario
M4W 1A8
Telephone: Toronto Area (416/local 905): (416) 326-3333
Long Distance: 1 (800) 387-0073 (within Ontario) TDD/TTY: (416) 325-7539 FAX: (416) 325-9195
www.ipc.on.ca
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Privacy of personal information is an important principle to Access Therapy. We are committed to collecting, using and disclosing personal information responsibly and only to the extent necessary for the services we provide. We try to be open and transparent about how we handle personal information. This document describes our privacy policies.
What is Personal Health Information?
Personal health information is information about an identifiable individual. Personal health information includes information that relates to:
- the physical or mental health of the individual (including family health history);
- the provision of health care to the individual (including identifying the individual’s health care provider);
- a plan of service under the Home Care and Community Services Act, 1994;
- payments or eligibility for health care or coverage for health care;
- the donation or testing of an individual’s body part or bodily substance;
- the individual’s health number; or
- the identification of the individual’s substitute decision-maker.
Who We Are
Our organization, Access Therapy, includes at the time of writing Arijana Palme, Carlin Palme and interns. We use a number of consultants and agencies that may, in the course of their duties, have limited access to personal health information we hold. These include computer consultants, office security and maintenance, bookkeepers and accountants, lawyers, temporary workers to cover holidays, credit card companies, website managers and cleaners. We restrict their access to any personal information we hold as much as is reasonably possible. We also have their assurance that they follow appropriate privacy principles.
Why We Collect Personal Health Information
We collect, use and disclose personal information in order to serve our clients. For our clients, the primary purpose for collecting personal health information is to provide psychotherapy and counselling. For example, we collect information about a client’s health history, including their family history, physical condition and function and social situation in order to help us assess what their health needs are, to advise them of their options and then to provide the health care they choose to have. A second primary purpose is to obtain a baseline of health and social information so that in providing ongoing health services we can identify changes that are occurring over time.
We also collect, use and disclose personal health information for purposes related to or secondary to our primary purposes. The most common examples of our related and secondary purposes are as follows:
Related Purpose #1: To obtain payment for services or goods provided. Payment may be obtained from the individual, OHIP, WSIB, private insurers or others.
Related Purpose #2: To conduct quality improvement and risk management activities. We review client files to ensure that we provide high quality services, including assessing the performance of our staff. External consultants (e.g. auditors, lawyers, practice consultants, voluntary accreditation programs) may conduct audits and quality improvement reviews on our behalf.
Related Purpose #3: To promote our clinic, new services, special events and opportunities (e.g. a seminar or conference) that we have available. We will always obtain express consent from the client prior to collecting or handling personal health information for this purpose.
Related Purpose #4: To comply with external regulators. Our professionals are regulated by [College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario and the Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers] who may inspect our records and interview our staff as a part of its regulatory activities in the public interest. The Colleges have their own strict confidentiality and privacy obligations. In addition, as professionals, we will report serious misconduct, incompetence or incapacity of other practitioners, whether they belong to other organizations or our own. Also, our organization believes that it should report information suggesting illegal behaviour to the authorities. In addition, we may be required by law to disclose personal health information to various government agencies (e.g. Ministry of Health, children’s aid societies, Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, Information and Privacy Commissioner, etc.).
Related Purpose #5: To educate our staff and students. We value the education and development of future and current professionals. We will review client records in order to educate our staff and students about the provision of health care.
Related Purpose #6: To facilitate the sale of our organization. If the organization or its assets were to be sold, the potential purchaser would want to conduct a “due diligence” review of the organization’s records to ensure that it is a viable business that has been honestly portrayed. The potential purchaser must first enter into an agreement with the organization to keep the information confidential and secure and not to retain any of the information longer than necessary to conduct the due diligence. Once a sale has been finalized, the organization may transfer records to the purchaser, but it will make reasonable efforts to provide notice to the individual before doing so.
Protecting Personal Information
We understand the importance of protecting personal information. For that reason, we have taken the following steps:
Paper information is either under supervision or secured in a locked or restricted area.
Electronic hardware is either under supervision or secured in a locked or restricted area at all times. In addition, strong passwords are used on all computers and mobile devices.
Personal health information is only stored on mobile devices if necessary. All personal health information stored on mobile devices is protected by strong encryption.
We try to avoid taking personal health information home to work on there. However, when we do so, we transport, use and store the personal health information securely.
Paper information is transferred through sealed, addressed envelopes or boxes by reputable companies with strong privacy policies.
Electronic information is either anonymized or encrypted before being transmitted.
Our staff members are trained to collect, use and disclose personal information only as necessary to fulfill their duties and in accordance with our privacy policy.
We do not post any personal information about our clients on social media sites and our staff members are trained on the appropriate use of social media sites.
External consultants and agencies with access to personal information must enter into privacy agreements with us.
Retention and Destruction of Personal Information
We need to retain personal information for some time to ensure that we can answer any questions you might have about the services provided and for our own accountability to external regulatory bodies. However, in order to protect your privacy, we do not want to keep personal information for too long.
We keep our client files for at least ten years from the date of the last client interaction or from the date the client turns 18.
We destroy paper files containing personal health information by cross-cut shredding. We destroy electronic information by deleting it in a manner that it cannot be restored. When hardware is discarded, we ensure that the hardware is physically destroyed or the data is erased or overwritten in a manner that the information cannot be recovered.
You Can Look at Your Records
With only a few exceptions, you have the right to see what personal information we hold about you, by contacting Arijana Palme. We can help you identify what records we might have about you. We will also try to help you understand any information you do not understand (e.g., short forms, technical language, etc.). We will need to confirm your identity, if we do not know you, before providing you with this access. We reserve the right to charge $30.00 for the first twenty pages of records and 25 cents for each additional page.
We will ask you to put your request in writing. We will respond to your request as soon as possible and generally within 30 days, if at all possible. If we cannot give you access, we will tell you the reason, as best we can, as to why.
If you believe there is a mistake in the information, you have the right to ask for it to be corrected. This applies to factual information and not to any professional opinions we may have formed. We may ask you to provide documentation that our files are wrong. Where we agree that we made a mistake we will make the correction. At your request and where it is reasonably possible, we will notify anyone to whom we sent this information (but we may deny your request if it would not reasonably have an effect on the ongoing provision of health care). If we do not agree that we have made a mistake, we will still agree to include in our file a brief statement from you on the point.
If there is a Privacy Breach
While we will take precautions to avoid any breach of your privacy, if there is a loss, theft or unauthorized access of your personal health information we will notify you.
Upon learning of a possible or known breach, we will take the following steps:
We will contain the breach to the best of our ability, including by taking the following steps if applicable
- Retrieving hard copies of personal health information that have been disclosed
- Ensuring no copies have been made
- Taking steps to prevent unauthorized access to electronic information (e.g., change passwords, restrict access, temporarily shut down system)
We will notify affected individuals
- We will provide our contact information in case the individual has further questions
- We will provide the Commissioner’s contact information and advise the affected individual of their right to complain to the Commissioner
We will investigate and remediate the problem, by:
- Conducting an internal investigation
- Determining what steps should be taken to prevent future breaches (e.g. changes to policies, additional safeguards)
- Ensuring staff is appropriately trained and conduct further training if required
Depending on the circumstances of the breach, we may notify and work with the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario. If we take disciplinary action against one of our practitioners [or revoke or restrict the privileges or affiliation of one of our practitioners] for a privacy breach, we are required to report that to the practitioner’s regulatory College. We may also report the breach to the relevant regulatory College if we believe that it was the result of professional misconduct, incompetence or incapacity.
Do You Have Questions or Concerns?
Our Information Officer, Arijana Palme, can be reached at:
289-432-1109
admin@accesstherapy.ca
She will attempt to answer any questions or concerns you might have.
If you wish to make a formal complaint about our privacy practices, you may make it in writing to our Information Officer. She will acknowledge receipt of your complaint, and ensure that it is investigated promptly and that you are provided with a formal decision and reasons in writing.
You also have the right to complain to the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario if you have concerns about our privacy practices or how your personal health information has been handled, by contacting:
Information and Privacy Commissioner/Ontario
2 Bloor Street East, Suite 1400
Toronto, Ontario M4W 1A8
Telephone: Toronto Area (416/local 905): (416) 326-3333
Long Distance: 1 (800) 387-0073 (within Ontario)
TDD/TTY: (416) 325-7539
FAX: (416) 325-9195
www.ipc.on.ca
This policy is made under the Personal Health Information Protection Act, 2004, S.O. 2004, c. 3. It is a complex statute and provides some additional exceptions to the privacy principles that are too detailed to set out here.