Notice of Privacy Practices

This notice describes how medical information about you may be used and disclosed, and how you can get access to this information. Please review it carefully.

Effective date and scope

Effective 15 September 2026.

This notice applies to PATH Health Services and to every clinician, employee, student, volunteer and contractor who works here.

We are required by law to keep your health information private, to give you this notice explaining our legal duties and privacy practices, to notify you if there is a breach of your unsecured health information, and to follow the terms of the notice that is currently in effect.

How we use and share your information without your written permission

Treatment. We use your information to provide and coordinate your care. For example, your therapist and your psychiatric provider may discuss your treatment with one another, and we may share information with another provider you are referred to.

Payment. We use your information to bill and collect payment for your care. For example, we may share information with your health plan to confirm coverage or obtain authorization for a service.

Health care operations. We use your information to run the practice. For example, for quality review, staff training, licensing, audits, and business management.

We may also use or share your information without your written permission in the following situations, each of which is limited by law:

When required by federal, state or local law
For public health activities, such as reporting a communicable disease
To report suspected abuse, neglect or domestic violence, as Arizona law requires of us
For health oversight activities such as audits and investigations
In response to a court order, subpoena, warrant or other lawful process
To law enforcement in the narrow circumstances the law permits
To avert a serious and imminent threat to the health or safety of you or another person
To coroners, medical examiners and funeral directors
For workers' compensation claims, as state law requires
For research, where an oversight board has approved a waiver of authorization
To a family member or friend involved in your care, or in an emergency, where you agree or do not object and where doing so is in your best interest

Arizona law, where it is stricter than federal law

Federal privacy law sets a floor, not a ceiling. Where Arizona protects your information more tightly than HIPAA does, we follow Arizona. These are the provisions that govern this practice.

Confidentiality of your records (A.R.S. § 12-2292). Arizona makes all medical records and payment records privileged and confidential. We may release them only where state or federal law authorises it, or where you or your health care decision maker signs a written authorisation.

Behavioral health records (A.R.S. § 36-509). Records of behavioral health services are confidential and are not public records. Where HIPAA describes broad categories of permitted disclosure, section 36-509 works from a closed list of named exceptions. Where a disclosure would be allowed under HIPAA but has no matching exception in section 36-509, we do not make it without your written authorisation.

Your conversations with your therapist (A.R.S. § 32-3283). Arizona gives the relationship between a client and a professional licensed by the Board of Behavioral Health Examiners the same confidential standing as the relationship between a lawyer and a client. The privilege is yours, not ours. It is waived only if you waive it in writing or testify about the communication yourself. The exceptions written into the statute are narrow: information the board requires in an investigation or proceeding, a clear and imminent danger to you or to another person, and disclosures the law otherwise compels. This provision covers our licensed clinical social worker. Our psychiatric nurse practitioner is licensed by the Arizona State Board of Nursing rather than the Board of Behavioral Health Examiners, so her records are protected by sections 12-2292 and 36-509 rather than by this one.

Threats of violence (A.R.S. § 36-517.02). Arizona does not ask us to predict violence in general. A duty to act arises only where you communicate an explicit threat of imminent serious physical harm or death to a clearly identified or identifiable victim, and you appear to have both the intent and the ability to carry it out. If that happens we may warn the person threatened, notify law enforcement where you or that person lives, take reasonable steps toward hospitalisation, or take other precautions a reasonable practitioner would take. Nothing short of that triggers it.

Reporting abuse (A.R.S. § 13-3620 and § 46-454). If we reasonably believe a minor has been abused or neglected, we must report it immediately to a peace officer or to the Department of Child Safety, and the privilege described above does not apply to that report. If we have a reasonable basis to believe a vulnerable adult has been abused, neglected or exploited, we must report it immediately to a peace officer or to the Adult Protective Services central intake unit.

How long we keep your record (A.R.S. § 12-2297). We must keep your record for at least six years after the last date you received services here. That is why we cannot delete your clinical record on request.

Uses that always require your written authorization

We will not use or share your information for the following purposes unless you give us written permission, and you may revoke that permission in writing at any time:

Most uses and disclosures of psychotherapy notes
Marketing
Sale of your health information
Most other uses and disclosures not described in this notice

What psychotherapy notes are. A psychotherapy note is a clinician’s private note about a counselling session, kept separate from the rest of your record. The term does not cover your diagnosis, your treatment plan, your symptoms, your prognosis, the dates and times of your sessions, or any record of medication. Those are part of your record proper and are handled like the rest of it.

If you revoke your authorization, we will stop using or sharing your information for that purpose, except to the extent we have already acted in reliance on it.

Records from a substance use disorder treatment program

PATH does not provide substance use disorder treatment. If we receive records about you from a federally assisted substance use disorder treatment program, those records carry protection beyond HIPAA under 42 CFR Part 2, and we apply it. You may give a single written consent covering future disclosures of those records for treatment, payment and health care operations, and you may revoke that consent in writing at any time. We will not use those records against you in a legal proceeding without your written consent or a court order that meets the Part 2 standard.

Your rights

You have the right to:

Inspect and receive a copy of your health information, in paper or electronically. Arizona sets deadlines shorter than the federal thirty days, and we follow whichever is shorter. Under A.R.S. § 12-2293, as amended effective 12 September 2026, we provide access or copies within seven business days of your written request. Where you need records for upcoming treatment we respond within ten business days if they are less than twelve months old in our current system, and fifteen business days if they are older. For any other purpose we respond within thirty calendar days. Where more than one of these could apply to your request, we work to the shorter one. We may charge a reasonable, cost-based fee.
Be told in writing if we deny access, and why. Arizona permits denial only on narrow grounds set out at A.R.S. § 12-2293(B) and (C), and requires us to note the determination in your record and explain it to you in writing.
Ask us to correct information you believe is wrong or incomplete. We may deny the request, and if we do we will explain why in writing.
Ask us to limit how we use or share your information. We are not required to agree, except in one case: if you pay in full out of your own pocket for a service, you may require us not to share information about it with your health plan, and we must honour that.
Ask us to contact you in a particular way or at a particular address. We will accommodate reasonable requests and will not ask you why.
Receive a list of certain disclosures we have made of your information in the past six years.
Receive a paper copy of this notice, even if you agreed to receive it electronically.
Be notified if there is a breach of your unsecured health information.
Choose someone to act for you, such as a person with medical power of attorney or a legal guardian, who may then exercise these rights on your behalf.

To exercise any of these rights, contact our Privacy Officer using the details at the foot of this page.

Complaints

If you believe your privacy rights have been violated, you may file a complaint with us using the contact details below, and you may file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights, at 200 Independence Avenue SW, Washington DC 20201, by calling 1-877-696-6775, or at hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/complaints.

We will not retaliate against you for filing a complaint, and filing one will not affect your care here in any way.

Changes to this notice

We may change this notice, and any change will apply to information we already hold as well as information we receive in future. The current version is always posted in our waiting room and on this website, and you may ask for a copy at any time.

Who to contact

Privacy Officer: Brandon Audia, Executive Director

Telephone: (480) 525-3770

Email: brandon@pathhealthservices.com

PATH Health Services, 605 E Broadway Rd, Tempe, AZ 85282

Questions about this page? Call (480) 525-3770 or write to us at 605 E Broadway Rd, Tempe, AZ 85282.