Important Information About Provider/Client Email
As a client of a Community Care
provider or office, you have the right to request we communicate with you by
electronic mail (email). It is also your right to be informed in sufficient
detail about the risks of communicating via email with your health care
provider or office, and how Community Care will use and disclose
provider/client email.
PLEASE READ THIS INFORMATION CAREFULLY
- Email communications
are two-way communications. However, responses and replies to emails sent
to or received by either you or your provider may be hours or days apart.
This means that there could be a delay in receiving treatment for an acute
condition.
- If you have an urgent
or an emergency situation, you should not rely solely on provider/patient
email to request assistance or to describe the urgent or emergency
situation. Instead, you should act as though provider/client email is not
available to you � and seek assistance by means consistent with your
needs.
- Email messages on your
computer, your laptop, and/or your PDA have inherent privacy risks �
especially when your email access is provided through your employer or
when access to your email messages is not password protected.
- Unencrypted email
provides as much privacy as a postcard. You should not communicate any
information with your provider that you would not want to be included on a
postcard that is sent through the post office.
- Email messages may be
inadvertently missed. To minimize this risk, Community Care requires you
respond appropriately to a test email message before we will allow health
information about you to be communicated with you via email. You can also
help minimize this risk by using only the email address that you are
provided at the successful conclusion of the testing period to communicate
with your Community Care providers or offices.
- Email is sent at the
touch of a button. Once sent, an email message cannot be recalled or
cancelled. Errors in transmission, regardless of the sender's caution, can
occur.
- In order to forward or
to process and respond to your email, individuals at Community Care other
than your provider may read your email message. Your email message is not
a private communication between you and your treating provider.
- Neither you nor the
person reading your email can see the facial expressions or gestures or
hear the voice of the sender. Email can be misinterpreted.
- At your provider's
discretion, your email messages and any and all responses to them may
become part of your medical record.