Privacy Policy
Privacy of personal information is an important principle to The Centre for Health. We are committed to collecting, using and disclosing personal information responsibly and only to the extent necessary for the services we provide. The following are the details of our privacy policy.
WHAT IS PERSONAL INFORMATION?
Personal information includes information that relates to an individual's personal characteristics (e.g., name, date of birth, home address and telephone number), their health (e.g., presenting problem, health history, health services received by the individual, social situation) or their activities and views (e.g., opinions expressed by an individual, an opinion or evaluation of an individual). Please note, business information (e.g., an individual's business address and telephone number), is not protected by privacy legislation.
WHO WE ARE
The Centre for Health is a full service counselling center, founded by two qualified and experienced therapists. We use a number of consultants, agencies, psychologists, counselors, and support staff that may, in the course of their duties, have limited access to the personal information we hold. The above personnelle may include but are not limited to bookkeepers and accountants, lawyers, office maintenance, cleaners, computer consultants, credit card companies, financial institutions, marketing personnel and website managers. We restrict their access to any personal information we hold as much as reasonably possible. We also have their assurance that they will follow appropriate privacy principles.
COLLECTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION: Primary Purposes
Clients
We collect, and use personal information in order to provide counselling services.
About Members of the General Public
For members of the general public, our primary purpose for collecting personal information (e.g., name, address, telephone number, email address) is to make them aware of counselling services in general or our practice in particular.
USE AND DISCLOSURE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION
No personal information will be communicated, directly or indirectly, to a third party without your informed and written consent. Exceptions to this policy include the legal, and/or ethical obligations to:
Inform a potential victim of violence of a client's intention to harm.
Inform an appropriate family member, health care professional or police if necessary of a client's intention to end his or her life.
Release a client's file if there is a court order to do so.
Inform Child and Family Services if there is suspicion of a child being at risk or in need of protection due to neglect, or physical, sexual or emotional abuse.
Report a regulated health professional who has sexually abused a client to the professional's regulatory body.
The Centre for Health is regulated by the OACCPP who may inspect our records and interview our mental health practitioners and staff as part of their regulatory activities in the public interest. Also, like all organizations, various government agencies (e.g., Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, Information and Privacy Commissioner, Human Rights Commission, etc.) have the authority to review our files and interview our mental health practitioners and staff as part of their mandates. In these circumstances, we may consult with professionals (e.g., lawyers, accountants) who will investigate the matter and report back to us.
The cost of some goods/services provided by our practice to clients is paid for by third parties (e.g., WSIB, private insurance, motor vehicle insurance, EAP Companies, First Nations and Inuit Health Branch). These third party payers often have your consent or legislative authority to direct us to collect and disclose to them certain information in order to demonstrate client entitlement to this funding.
It is the policy of The Centre for Health that clients have a legal and moral right to know what information is contained about them in their record. Clients or their legal designates shall have access to all information which can be identified as pertaining to them (and only them) and which is stored in the client record, with the exception of information that is believed to be harmful or that is confidential about or from third parties. We will need to confirm your identity and legal right to have access to the information. In some cases, this may include producing identification and or proof that you have legal authority to make decisions on behalf of the client. We reserve the right to charge a nominal fee for such requests. We may ask you to put your request in writing. If we cannot give you access to your record, we will tell you within 30 days if at all possible and tell you the reason, as best we can, as to why we cannot give you access.
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. If changed, a statement of changed information is included in the record. If the request for a change is declined, the client may file a notice of disagreement in the record.
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, we do not want to keep personal information too long in order to protect your privacy. We are required to keep our client files for ten years following the client's last contact or if the client was less than eighteen years of age at the time of the last contact, for ten years following the day the client would have become eighteen.
IF YOU NEED MORE INFORMATION
For more information about our privacy policies and procedures, please contact us at info@thecentreforhealth.com or phone us at 1-866-241-9880.
This policy is made under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). PIPEDA is a complex Act and provides some additional exceptions to the privacy principles that are too detailed to set out here. There are some rare exceptions to the commitments set out above.
The Centre for Health reserves the right to change the terms of this privacy policy and to make new policy provisions effective for all personal information we maintain. If this privacy policy is revised, we will post the revised policy in a conspicuous location in our offices as well as on our website.
For more general inquiries, the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Canada oversees the administration of the privacy legislation in the private sector. The Commissioner also acts as a kind of ombudsman for privacy disputes. The Information and Privacy Commissioner can be reached at:
112 Kent Street
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 1H3
Telephone: 1-800-282-1376
Fax: 613-947-6850
www.privcom.gc.ca
