HIPAA & Your Privacy · Olivia Roster, Privacy Officer · Bonjour Home Care

HIPAA & Your Privacy · Olivia Roster, Care Concierge & HIPAA Privacy Officer

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HIPAA — the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 — gives you and your loved one legally protected control over health information. This page is a plain-English summary of what that means when Bonjour Home Care places a caregiver in your home. Our complete Privacy Policy has the full legal detail — this page is the family version.

What HIPAA Means in Everyday Home Care

The moment Olivia opens a case for your loved one, we create records: the care assessment, the care plan, daily caregiver notes, medication tracking, long-term-care insurance policy details, family contact notes, and photos we take with your consent. All of that is Protected Health Information, or PHI. HIPAA gives you six specific rights over PHI and gives Bonjour Home Care specific duties to safeguard it.

Your Six HIPAA Rights — and How Olivia Honors Each One

1. Right to See Your Records

You can request a copy of your loved one’s care records at any time. Our commitment: written request by email or phone, and we send a secure PDF within 30 days — often within a week. No fee for the first request each year, and no fee ever for records sent to a hospital or another treating provider on your behalf.

2. Right to Correct Your Records

If you see anything in the record that is inaccurate — a wrong medication name, an outdated allergy — you can ask us to amend it. Our commitment: we review every amendment request within 60 days, and if we agree with the correction we update the record permanently. If we disagree, we still add your written statement to the file so both perspectives are visible.

3. Right to Know Who Saw Your Records

HIPAA calls this an “accounting of disclosures.” You can ask for a list of every time we shared PHI with someone outside of the ordinary treatment-payment-operations workflow. Our commitment: the accounting covers the previous six years, is free once every 12 months, and shows you the date, the recipient, and the reason for each disclosure.

4. Right to Request Restrictions

You can ask us not to share specific information with specific people. Example: you may not want a particular relative to know a diagnosis. Our commitment: we always agree to any restriction you request when the PHI relates to a service you paid for out of pocket and the disclosure would go to a health plan. For other restrictions, we discuss them with you and confirm in writing what we can and cannot honor.

5. Right to Confidential Communication

You can tell us how and where to reach you — a specific phone number, a specific email, a designated family member. Our commitment: we honor any reasonable request without asking why. Common examples: send billing to a spouse rather than the client, call the daughter’s cell not the household landline, mail records to a P.O. Box.

6. Right to File a Complaint

If you believe your HIPAA rights were violated, you have two independent complaint paths — and there is no retaliation for using either. Our commitment: our internal path routes directly to Olivia. Call (908) 447-4896 or email privacy@bonjourhomecare.com. Federal path: file with the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Office for Civil Rights at hhs.gov/ocr/complaints.

When Bonjour Home Care Shares PHI

HIPAA lets covered entities share PHI without your specific authorization for three purposes — Treatment, Payment, and Health Care Operations. Some disclosures we make because the law requires us: suspected abuse or exploitation of a vulnerable adult under N.J.S.A. 52:27D-406, communicable disease reporting, court orders, and law enforcement requests that meet legal thresholds. We document every required disclosure and add it to your accounting of disclosures on request. Everything else needs your written authorization, which you can revoke in writing at any time.

How Olivia Personally Protects Your Information

• Access is minimum-necessary. The caregiver placed in your home sees only the care plan and daily notes — not billing, not other clients’ data.
• Digital records are encrypted. Care plans live in a secure system encrypted at rest and in transit. No client PHI ever sits in a personal email inbox.
• Paper records stay in a locked cabinet at our Scotch Plains office.
• Phones and laptops require passcodes and remote-wipe. If a caregiver loses a device we can wipe it within minutes.
• Annual training is documented for every caregiver, and Olivia signs off personally each year.
• Breach notification protocol. HIPAA requires 60 days; we commit to notifying you within 5 business days of confirmation.

How to Exercise Any of Your Rights

One Call to Olivia — Any HIPAA Question, Answered

Effective Date: 2026-07-24 · HIPAA Privacy Officer: Olivia Roster, Care Concierge · Contact: (908) 447-4896