NOTICE OF PRIVACY PRACTICES

This Notice is effective as of April 14, 2003

THIS NOTICE DESCRIBES HOW MEDICAL INFORMATION ABOUT YOU MAY BE USED AND DISCLOSED AND HOW YOU CAN GET ACCESS TO THIS INFORMATION. PLEASE READ IT CAREFULLY WE ARE REQUIRED BY LAW TO PROTECT MEDICAL INFORMATION ABOUT YOU

We are required by law to protect the privacy of medical information about you and that identifies you. This medical information may be information about health care we provide to you or payment for health care provided to you. It may also be information about your past, present, or future medical condition.

We are also required by law to provide you with this Notice of Privacy Practices explaining our legal duties and privacy practices with respect to medical information. We are legally required to follow the terms of this Notice. In other words, we are only allowed to use and disclose medical information in the manner that we have described in this Notice.

We may change the terms of this Notice in the future. We reserve the right to make changes and to make the new Notice effective for all medical information that we maintain. If we make changes to the Notice, we will:

- Post the new Notice in our waiting area

- Have copies of the new Notice available upon request (you may always contact us at (312) 698-9855 to obtain a copy of the current Notice)

The rest of this Notice will:

- Discuss how we may use and disclose medical information about you

- Explain your rights with respect to medical information about you

- Describe how and where you may file a privacy related complaint

If, at any time, you have questions about information in this Notice or about our privacy policies, procedures or practices, you can contact us at (312) 698-9855.

WE MAY USE AND DISCLOSE MEDICAL INFORMATION ABOUT YOU IN SEVERAL CIRCUMSTANCES

We use and disclose medical information about patients everyday. This section of our Notice explains in some detail how we may use and disclose medical information about you in order to provide health care, obtain payment for that health care, and operate our business efficiently. This section then briefly mentions several other circumstances in which we may use or disclose medical information about you. For more information about any of these uses or disclosures, or about any of our privacy policies, procedures or practices, contact us at (312) 698-9855

1. TREATMENT

We may use and disclose medical information about you to provide health care treatment to you. In other words, we may use and disclose medical information about you to provide, coordinate or manage your health care and related services. This may include communicating with other health care providers regarding your treatment and coordinating and managing your health care with others.

2. PAYMENT

We may use and disclose medical information about you to obtain payment for health care services that you received. This means that, within the health department, we may use medical information about you to arrange for payment (such as preparing bills and managing accounts). We also may disclose medical information about you to others (such as insurers, collection agencies, and consumer reporting agencies). In some instances, we may disclose medical information about you to an insurance plan before you receive certain health care services because, for example, we may want to know whether the insurance plan will pay for a particular service.

3. HEALTH CARE OPERATIONS

We may use and disclose medical information about you in performing a variety of business activities that we call "health care operations." These "health care operations" activities allow us to, for example, improve the quality of care we provide and reduce health care costs. For example, we may use or disclose medical information about you in performing the following activities.

- Reviewing and evaluating the skills, qualifications, and performance of any health care providers taking care of you

- Providing training programs for students, trainees, health care providers or non health care professionals to help them practice or improve their skills

- Cooperating with outside organizations that evaluate, certify or license health care providers, staff or facilities in a particular field or specialty.

- Reviewing and improving the quality, efficiency and cost of care that we provide to you and our other patients.

- Improving health care and lowering costs for groups of people who have similar health problems and helping manage and coordinate the care for these groups of people.

- Cooperating with outside organizations that assess the quality of the care others and we provide, including government agencies and private organizations.

- Planning for our organization's future operations.

- Resolving grievances within our organization

- Reviewing our activities and using or disclosing medical information in the event that control of our organization significantly changes.

- Working with others (such as lawyers, accountants and other providers) who assist us to comply with this Notice and other applicable laws.

4. PERSONS INVOLVED IN YOUR CASE

We may use and disclose medical information about you to a relative, close personal friend or any other person you identify if that person is involved in your care and the information is relevant to your care. If the patient is a minor, we may disclose medical information about the minor to a parent, guardian or other person responsible for the minor except in limited circumstances. For more information on the privacy of minors' information, contact us at (312) 698-9855

We may also use or disclose medical information about you to a relative, another person involved in your care or possibly a disaster relief organization (such as the Red Cross) if we need to notify someone about your location or condition.

You may ask us at any time not to disclose medical information about you to persons involved in your care. We will agree to your request and not disclose the information except in certain limited circumstances (such as emergencies) or if the patient is a minor. If the patient is a minor, we may or may not be able to agree to your request.

5. REQUIRED BY LAW

We will use and disclose medical information about you whenever we are required by law to do so. There are many state and federal laws that require us to use and disclose medical information. For example, state law requires us to report gunshot wounds and other injuries to the police and to report known or suspected child abuse or neglect to the Department of Social Services. We will comply with those state laws and with all other applicable laws.

6. NATIONAL PRIORITY USES AND DISCLOSURES

When permitted by law, we may use or disclose medical information about you without your permission for various activities that are recognized as "national priorities." In other words, the government has determined that under certain circumstances (described below), it is so important to disclose medical information that it is acceptable to disclose medical information without the individual's permission. We will only disclose medical information about you in the following circumstances when we are permitted to do so by law. Below are brief descriptions of the "national priority" activities recognized by law. For more information of these types of disclosures, contact us at (312) 698-9855.

- Threat to health or safety: We may use or disclose medical information about you if we believe it is necessary to prevent or lessen a serious thereat to health or safety.

- Public health activities: We may use or disclose medical information about you for public health activities. Public health activities require the use of medical information for various activities, including, but limited to, activities related to investigating diseases, reporting child abuse and neglect, monitoring drugs or devices regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, and monitoring work related illnesses or injuries. For example, if you have been exposed to a communicable disease (such as a sexually transmitted disease), we may report it to the State and take other actions to prevent the spread of the disease.

- Abuse, neglect or domestic violence: We may disclose medical information about you to a government authority (such as the Department of Social Services) if you are an adult and we reasonably believe that you may be a victim of abuse, neglect or domestic violence.

- Health oversight activities: We may disclose medical information about you to a health oversight agency - which is basically an agency responsible for overseeing the health care system or certain government programs. For example, a government agency may request information from us while they are investigating possible insurance fraud.

- Court proceedings: We may disclose medical information about you to a court or an officer of the court (such as an attorney). For example, we would disclose medical information about you to a court if a judge orders us to do so.

- Law enforcement: We may disclose medical information about you to law enforcement official for specific law enforcement purposes. For example, we would disclose limited medical information about you to a police officer if the officer need the information to help find or identify a missing person.

- Coroners and others: We may disclose medical information about you to a coroner, medical examiner, or funeral director or to organizations that help with organ, eye and tissue transplants.

- Workers' compensation: We may disclose medical information about you in order to comply with workers' compensation laws.

- Research organizations: We may disclose medical information about you to research organizations if the organization has satisfied certain conditions about protecting the privacy of medical information.

- Certain government functions: We may use or disclose medical information about you for certain government functions, including but not limited to military and veterans' activated and national security and intelligence activities. We may also use or disclose medical information about you to a correctional institution in some circumstances.

7. AUTHORIZATION

Other than the uses and disclosures described above (#1-6), we will not use or disclose medical information about you without the "authorization" - or signed permission-of you or your personal representative. In some instances, we may wish to use or disclose medical information about you and we may contact you to ask you to sign an authorization form. In other instances, you may contact us to ask us to disclose medical information and we will ask you to sign an authorization form