The following document is a requirement of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and Personal Health Information Protection Act (PHIPA)

Written Statement of Information Practices

Collection of Personal Health Information:

With your consent we collect your personal health information directly from you, or from the person acting on your behalf.  Examples of the type of personal health information that we collect may include, your name, date of birth, address, health history, records of your visits to ‘Spark & Sound Health’ and details of the treatment that you received during your visits.  We may sometimes collect personal health information about you from other sources, if we have obtained your consent to do so, or if the law permits.

Uses and Disclosures of Personal Health Information:
Your personal health information will be used and disclosed only for the following purposes:

• Treating and providing health care to you;
• Receive or directly invoice for your payment for treatment and care (e.g., WSIB, private insurer, others);
• Conduct risk management and quality improvement activities;
• Comply with legal and regulatory requirements;
• Fulfill other purposes permitted or required by law;

Your Rights:
At any time you may access, correct your personal health records, or withdraw your consent for some of the above uses and disclosures (subject to legal exceptions) by contacting our contact person.

Our Responsibilities:
We take steps to protect your personal health and financial information from theft, loss, unauthorized access, copying, modification, use, disclosure, and disposal.
We conduct audits quarterly to monitor and manage our privacy compliance.
We take steps to ensure that everyone who performs services for us protects your privacy and only uses your personal health information for the purposes you have consented to.

Contact Us:
Our Contact Person is Obaid Qureshy, Director
To find out more about our privacy protection practices, or raise any concerns, contact our contact person at:

Tel No: 416-826-0006

Fax #: 416-757-0006

E-mail: Obaid.qureshy@gmail.com

You have the right to file a complaint to the information and Privacy Commissioner/Ontario if you think we have violated your rights.

The Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario can be reached at:
2 Bloor Street East, Suite 1400, Toronto Ontario, M4W 1A8
Tel: Toronto Area: 416-326-3333   Long Distance: 1-800-387-0073      Fax:  416-325-9195

Spark & Sound Health’s Privacy Policy

Privacy of personal information is an important principle to ‘Spark & Sound Health’.  We are committed to collecting, using, and disclosing personal information responsibly and only to the extent necessary for the goods and services we provide.  We also try to be open and transparent as to how we handle personal information.  This document describes our privacy policies.

What is Personal Information?

Personal information is information about an identifiable individual.  Personal information includes information that relates to their personal characteristics (e.g., gender, age, income, home address or phone number, ethnic background, family status), their health (e.g., health history, health conditions, health services received by them) or their activities and views (e.g., religion, politics, opinions expressed by an individual, and opinion or evaluation of an individual).  Personal information is to be contrasted with business information (e.g., in an individual’s business address and telephone number), which is not protected by privacy legislation.

Who We Are

‘Spark & Sound Health’, a Multidisciplinary Team of Physiotherapists, Registered Massage Therapists, Chiropodists, Chiropractors, Acupuncturists  and the administrative staff.  We use a number of consultants and agencies that may, in the course of their duties, have limited access to personal information we hold.  These include computer consultants, office security and maintenance, accountants, temporary workers to cover holidays and co-op, credit card companies, website managers, and lawyers.  We restrict their access to any personal information we hold as much as is reasonably possible.  We also have their assurance that they follow the appropriate privacy procedures.

We Collect Personal Information: Primary Purposes

About Clients

Like all Therapists, we collect, use and disclose personal information in order to serve our patients.  For our patients, the primary purpose for collecting personal information is to provide treatment.  For example, we collect information about a patient’s health history, including family history, physical condition and function and social situation, in order to help us assess what the patient’s health needs are, to advise the patient of their options and then to provide the health care the patient chooses to have.  A secondary primary purpose is to obtain a baseline of health and social information so that in providing ongoing health services we can identify changes that are occurring over time.  It is not possible for us to collect such information without the clients express consent, but this might occur in an emergency (e.g., the client is unconscious) or where we believe the client would consent if asked and it is impractical to obtain consent (e.g., a family member passing a message on from our client we have no reason to believe the message is not genuine).

About Contract Staff, Volunteers and Students

For people who are contracted to do work for us (e.g., temporary workers), our primary purpose for collecting personal information is to ensure we can contact them in the future (e.g., for new assignments) and for necessary work-related communication (e.g., sending out pay cheques, year-end tax receipts).  Examples of the type of personal information we collect for those purposes include home addresses and telephone numbers.  It is rare for us to collect such information without prior consent, but it might happen in case of an emergency (e.g., a COVID-19 outbreak) or to investigate a possible breach of the law (e.g., if a theft were to occur in the clinic).  If contact staff, volunteers or students wish a letter of reference or an evaluation, we will collect information about their work-related performance and provide a report as authorized by them.

We Collect Personal Information: Related and Secondary Purposes

Like most organizations, we also collect, use and disclose information for purposes related to or secondary to our primary purposes.  The most common examples of our related and secondary purposes are as follows:

To invoice patient for those goods and services that were not paid for at the time, to process credit card payments, or to collect unpaid accounts.

To advise patients that their product or service should be reviewed (e.g., to ensure a product is still functioning properly and appropriate for their current needs and to consider modifications or replacement).

To advise patients and others of special events or opportunities (e.g., a seminar, development of a new service, arrival of a new product) that we have available.

Our clinic reviews patients and other files for the purpose of ensuring that we provide high quality services, including assessing the performance of our staff.  In addition, external consultants (e.g., lawyers, auditors, practice consultants, voluntary accreditation programs) may on our behalf do audits and continuing quality improvement reviews of our Clinic, including reviewing patient files and interviewing our staff.

Each College may inspect our records and interview staff as a part of their regulatory activities in the public interest.  In addition, as professionals, we will report serious misconduct, incompetence, or incapacity of other practitioners, whether they belong to other organizations or our own.  Also, our organization believes that it should report information suggesting illegal behaviour to the authorities.  External regulators have their own strict privacy obligations.  Sometimes these reports include personal information about our patients, or other individuals, to support our concern (e.g., improper services). Also, like all organizations, various government agencies (e.g., Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, Information and Privacy Commissioner, Human Rights Commission, etc.) have the authority to review our files and interview our staff as a part of their mandates.  In these circumstances, we may consult with professionals (e.g., accountants, lawyers) who will investigate the matter and report back to us.

The cost of some goods/services provided by the organization to patients is paid for by third parties (e.g., OHIP, WSIB, private insurance, Assistive Devices Program).  These third-party payers often have your consent or legislative authority to direct us to collect and disclose to them certain information in order to demonstrate patient entitlement to this funding.

Patients or other individuals we deal with may have questions about our goods and services after they have been received.  We also provide ongoing services for many of our patients over a period of months or years for which our previous records are helpful.  We retain our client information for a minimum of ten years after the last contact to enable us to respond to those questions and provide these services.

You can choose not to be part of some of these related or secondary purposes (e.g., by declining to receive notice of special events or opportunities, by paying for your services in advance).  We do not, however, have much choice about some of these related or secondary purposes (e.g., external regulation).

Protecting Personal Information:

We understand the importance of protecting personal information.  For that reason, we have taken the following steps:

• We strive to be a paperless practice
• Electronic hardware is either under supervision.  In addition, passwords are used on iPads and computers.
• Electronic information is transmitted either through a direct line.
• Staff is trained to collect, use and disclose personal information only as necessary to fulfill their duties and in accordance with our privacy policy.

Retention and Destruction of Personal Information:
We need to retain personal information for some time to ensure that we can answer any questions you might have about our services provided and for our own accountability to external regulatory bodies.  However, we do not want to keep personal information too long in order to protect your privacy.

We keep our patients’ files for a period of ten years.  Our patient and contact directories are much more difficult to systematically destroy, so we remove such information when we can if it does not appear that we will be contacting you again.  However, if you ask, we will remove such contact information right away.  We keep any personal information relating to our general correspondence (i.e., with people who are not clients) newsletters, seminars and marketing activities for about six months after the newsletter ceases publication or a seminar or marketing activity is over.

We destroy paper files containing personal information by shredding.  We destroy electronic information by deleting it and, when the hardware is discarded, we ensure that the hard drive is physically destroyed.

You can look at your Information:
With only a few exceptions, you have the right to see what personal information we hold about you.  Often all you have to do is ask.  We can help you identify what records we might have about you.  We will also try to help you understand any information you do not understand (e.g., short forms, technical language, etc.).  We will need to confirm your identity, if we do not know you, before providing you with access.  We reserve the right to charge a nominal fee for such requests.  If there is a problem we may ask you to put your request in writing.  If we cannot give you access, we will tell you within 30 days if at all possible and tell you the reason, as best we can, as to why we cannot give you access.

If you believe there is a mistake in the information, you have the right to ask for it to be corrected.  This applies to factual information and not to any professional opinions we may have formed.  We may ask you to provide documentation that our files are wrong.  Where we agree that we made a mistake, we will make the correction and notify anyone to whom we sent this information.  If we do not agree that we made a mistake, we will still agree to include our file in a brief statement from you on the point and we will forward that statement to anyone else who received the earlier information.

Do you have a Question?

Our Information Officer, Obaid Qureshy, Director can be reached at 127 Lebovic Ave, Unit 1.

He will attempt to answer any questions or concerns you might have regarding your personal information.

If you have a concern about the professionalism or competence of our services or the mental or physical capacity of any of our professional staff, we would ask you to discuss those concerns with us.  However, if we cannot satisfy your concerns, you are entitled to complain to the regulatory bodies.

This policy is made under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.  That is a complex Act and provides some additional exceptions to the privacy principles that are too detailed to set out here.  There are some rare exceptions to the commitments set out above.