Who this notice covers
Healthy Minds Tennessee, PLLC provides outpatient psychiatric care from offices in Green Hills (Nashville) and Franklin, Tennessee. Throughout this notice, “we,” “us,” and “the practice” refer to Healthy Minds Tennessee, PLLC. We provide medication management and psychiatric evaluation, psychotherapy, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), ketamine and other IV infusion therapies, and Spravato and other neuromodulation treatments. We are an in-network practice and bill commercial health insurance for these services.
What we mean by health information
Your health information includes everything we create or receive that identifies you and relates to your health, your care, or payment for your care. Your chart, your treatment plans, your medication history, your questionnaire scores, your TMS and infusion session records, your billing records, and our correspondence with your other physicians all count.
We are required by law to protect this information, to give you this notice, and to follow the terms of the notice currently in effect.
How we may use and disclose your health information without your permission
Treatment
We use your health information to provide, coordinate, and manage your care. Your clinician reviews your history to build a treatment plan. Our nursing staff sees your record before an infusion. Our TMS coordinator reads your motor threshold and your stimulation parameters before a session. We send information to your primary care physician, your therapist, your pharmacy, and any specialist involved in your care.
Example: Before your first ketamine infusion, your clinician shares your blood pressure history and your current medication list with our infusion nurse.
Payment
We use and disclose your health information to bill and collect for your care. As an in-network practice, we bill your commercial health plan for the services we provide.
Getting your care authorized and paid requires us to send your health plan clinical detail. Depending on the service, that includes your diagnosis, the treatments and medications you have tried and how you responded, your symptom rating scores, the number of sessions or infusions delivered, and your progress during treatment. Your plan’s utilization reviewer may request records, may ask our clinicians to justify continued treatment by telephone, and may audit what we submitted. Certain services, such as TMS, Spravato, and infusion therapies, routinely require prior authorization before a plan will cover them. Appeals of a denial require the same detail again. Federal law permits these disclosures for payment and does not require your separate written permission for each one.
Example: Your health plan requires prior authorization for TMS, so our billing team submits your diagnosis, your medication trial history, and your PHQ-9 scores to the plan’s reviewer.
Health care operations
We use your health information to run the practice. That covers quality review, outcome tracking, staff supervision, credentialing, licensing, accreditation, business planning, legal and accounting services, and resolving a grievance.
Example: Our clinicians review de-identified outcome data across our TMS patients to evaluate whether a protocol change improved remission rates.
Appointment reminders and health information
We may call, text, email, or mail you about an appointment, a refill, a lapsed treatment course, or a treatment alternative that may interest you. Tell us to stop and we will.
People involved in your care
We may share information relevant to your care with a family member, a partner, or a friend you have involved. If you can tell us your preference, we ask you first. If you cannot, and we judge it to be in your best interest, we use our professional judgment. We may tell a family member enough to locate you or to explain your general condition in an emergency.
Business associates
Companies that perform services for us may need your information to do the work. Our electronic health record vendor, our billing clearinghouse, our transcription service, our attorneys, and our accountants are examples. Each signs a written agreement requiring the same protections we provide.
Research
We conduct clinical research. We will ask for your written permission before enrolling you in a study or using your identifiable information in one. An institutional review board or a privacy board may approve limited uses of your information without your permission, including preparation of a research protocol, and we will not remove your information from the practice in that circumstance. We may use and share information about patients who have died for research purposes.
When the law requires it
We disclose your health information when federal, state, or local law requires it.
Public health and safety
We may disclose your information to a public health authority for disease prevention or control, to report a birth or a death, to report a reaction to a medication or a problem with a medical device, or to notify someone who may have been exposed to a communicable disease.
Abuse, neglect, and domestic violence
We report suspected child abuse or neglect, adult abuse or neglect, and other circumstances required by Tennessee law.
Serious threat to health or safety
If we believe you present a serious and imminent threat to yourself or to an identifiable person, we may disclose what is necessary to prevent the harm, including to law enforcement and to the person at risk. Tennessee law governs when a mental health professional must take this step.
Health oversight
We may disclose your information to an agency conducting an audit, an investigation, an inspection, a licensure action, or a civil or criminal proceeding related to the health care system.
Judicial and administrative proceedings
We may disclose your information in response to a court order, a subpoena, a discovery request, or similar lawful process. Records of psychiatric treatment carry additional protections in Tennessee courts, and we assert them.
Law enforcement
We may disclose limited information to law enforcement to comply with a court order, warrant, or grand jury subpoena; to identify or locate a suspect, fugitive, material witness, or missing person; about a crime victim under specific conditions; about a death we believe resulted from criminal conduct; about a crime on our premises; or in an emergency to report a crime.
Coroners, medical examiners, and funeral directors
We may release information to identify a deceased person, determine a cause of death, or allow a funeral director to carry out their duties.
Organ and tissue donation
We may release information to organizations that handle organ procurement or transplantation.
Workers’ compensation
We may disclose your information as authorized by Tennessee workers’ compensation law.
Military, veterans, national security, and correctional institutions
We may disclose information as required for military command authorities, for authorized national security and intelligence activities, for protection of the President and others, and to a correctional institution holding you in custody.
Uses and disclosures that require your written permission
Anything not described above requires your written authorization. Three categories deserve specific mention.
Psychotherapy notes. A psychotherapist’s private session notes, kept separate from the rest of your record, require your written authorization for nearly every disclosure. Very narrow exceptions exist for supervision, for our own legal defense, and for the safety exceptions above.
Marketing. We will not use or disclose your health information for marketing without your written authorization. That includes using your name, your image, your words, or your treatment story in any advertisement, on our website, on social media, or in printed material. Patient testimonials on our website appear only with signed authorization.
Sale of your information. We do not sell your health information, and we would need your written authorization to do so.
You may revoke an authorization in writing at any time. Revoking it stops future use. It cannot undo a disclosure we already made in reliance on it.
Laws that protect you further
Some categories of your information carry protections stronger than the federal baseline. Where a stricter law applies, we follow the stricter law.
Tennessee mental health records law restricts disclosure of records of psychiatric and behavioral health treatment beyond what federal law requires.
Substance use disorder records. Records we receive from a federally assisted substance use disorder treatment program are protected by 42 CFR Part 2. Those records, and any testimony relaying their content, may not be used or disclosed in a civil, criminal, administrative, or legislative proceeding against you without your written consent or a court order that meets specific requirements. You may complain about a violation of Part 2 to the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
HIV and AIDS information, genetic information, and sexually transmitted disease information carry additional restrictions under Tennessee and federal law, including the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act.
Your rights
Ask us to restrict what we share
You may ask us to limit what we use or disclose for treatment, payment, or operations, and to limit what we tell a family member. We are not required to agree, and we will tell you if we decline.
One request we must honor. If you pay for a service in full out of pocket, you may require us to withhold information about that service from your health plan. We will honor that request. Tell us at the time of service, before we submit anything.
Ask us to reach you a certain way
You may ask us to contact you at a specific number, a specific address, or by a specific method. Ask us not to leave a voicemail, or to send mail to your office instead of your home, and we will accommodate any reasonable request without asking your reason.
See and get a copy of your record
You may inspect and receive a copy of your medical and billing records. Submit the request in writing to our practice manager. We will respond within thirty days. We provide an electronic copy in the form you request when we can readily produce it, and we may charge a reasonable, cost-based fee for copying, mailing, or a summary. You may also direct us to send a copy to a person you name. We may deny access in limited circumstances, and where the law allows, you may ask for a review of that denial.
Ask us to correct your record
If you believe something in your record is wrong or incomplete, ask us in writing to amend it and tell us why. We may deny the request, including when we did not create the entry or when we determine the record is accurate. If we deny it, you may submit a statement of disagreement, and we will include it in your record.
Get a list of who we shared it with
You may request an accounting of disclosures we made in the six years before your request, excluding disclosures for treatment, payment, operations, and several other categories. One accounting per twelve months is free, and we may charge for additional requests.
Get a paper copy of this notice
Ask at the front desk and we will hand you one, even if you have already received it electronically. This notice is also posted at healthymindstn.com.
Be told about a breach
If a breach compromises your unsecured health information, we will notify you.
Choose someone to act for you
A person holding your medical power of attorney, or a legal guardian, may exercise these rights on your behalf. We will ask to see the documentation.
Our responsibilities
We are required by law to protect your health information, to notify you of a breach affecting it, and to follow the terms of this notice. We will not use or disclose your information for any purpose not described here without your written authorization.
Changes to this notice
We may change this notice and apply the change to information we already hold. A revised notice will be posted in our offices and at healthymindstn.com, and we will give you a copy at your next visit if you ask.
Complaints
Tell us first. Our Privacy Officer will look into it.
Ali A. Farooqui, M.D., Privacy Officer
Healthy Minds Tennessee, PLLC
2000 Glen Echo Rd, Suite 115, Nashville, TN 37215
(629) 294-4520
You may also file a complaint with the federal government:
Office for Civil Rights
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
200 Independence Avenue SW, Room 509F, Washington, DC 20201
1-877-696-6775
ocrportal.hhs.gov/ocr/portal/lobby.jsf
Complaining costs you nothing and changes nothing about your care. We will not retaliate against you for filing one.