A message to our patients regarding the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) PRIVACY RULE

The federal government recently enacted new legislation which focuses on protecting the privacy of your confidential health information. This law was established to restrict the improper use and disclosure of your protected health information. Protected health information is any information that identifies, or can be used to identify an individual, such as name, address, medical record number, date of birth, etc.

In order to comply with the HIPAA Privacy Rule, Westcliff Medical Laboratories has educated and trained all of our employees on new policies and procedures which we have implemented in order to safeguard your privacy. For example, we developed Confidential Patient Sign-In protocol in an effort to keep other patients visiting our lab on a particular day from seeing who else was there on that same day.

HIPAA was established to protect you, the patient, from improper use or disclosure of your personal information and, therefore, we are taking strict measures to adhere to a new set of imposed guidelines. What may appear to be an inconvenience to you is, in reality, protecting your privacy.

We appreciate your understanding and cooperation.