Psychora Behavioral Health PC 229 McWhorter St, Suite 1B · Newark, NJ 07105 · 862-420-7888 · info@psychorapc.com

Psychora Behavioral Health PC

Notice of Privacy Practices

How your health information is used and shared, and the rights you have over it.

Effective date: November 11, 2026

1Who this notice covers

This notice applies to Psychora Behavioral Health PC: to its clinicians, and to the care team that handles scheduling, forms and insurance. It covers the record kept about your care — your registration and intake forms, session notes, diagnoses, treatment plans, billing and claims, and anything you send the practice.

"Health information" below means information that identifies you and relates to your mental or physical health, your care, or payment for your care. Federal law calls it protected health information.

2How your information is used without your permission

There are three ordinary purposes for which the law permits a practice to use and share your information without asking you each time.

For your treatment

To provide and coordinate your care. Within the practice, that means your clinician using your record, and talking with a colleague at the practice about your care when that helps. It also covers talking with another clinician you are seeing — a psychiatrist, your primary care doctor, a previous therapist — when that is part of treating you. If sharing with your primary care provider is something you would rather not happen, say so; the new client form asks you directly, and you may change that answer at any time.

For payment

To be paid for your care. An insurer will not pay a claim without the dates of service, the service codes, and a diagnosis, so those go to the insurer responsible for your care — your health plan, or the insurer handling a workers' compensation or no-fault (car accident) claim. If the insurer conducts a medical-necessity review or an audit, or needs records to handle your claim, it may request parts of your record, and the practice releases the minimum necessary to answer what was asked. This also covers checking your benefits before a session and collecting what you owe.

For running the practice

Health care operations: quality of care, record-keeping, scheduling, licensing board requirements, professional consultation, and the practice's own business and legal needs. When a clinician consults a colleague outside the practice about a difficult case, it is done in a way that does not identify you unless you have authorized it.

Business associates

Some of the practice's functions run on outside services — an electronic record system, a billing platform, a video platform, a secure storage provider. Where the law requires it, the practice has a written agreement obliging that company to protect your information and to use it only for the work it does for the practice. Those companies may not use your information for their own purposes.

Where your record does not go

Your information is not sold, is never used to advertise anything to you, and does not go to an employer, a school, a family member or an attorney without your written permission, except where the law requires or allows it — see section 4 and section 5.

3Psychotherapy notes are treated differently

Psychotherapy notes are the private notes a therapist keeps about a session — impressions, hypotheses, the contents of the conversation — kept separately from the rest of your record. They are not the same as your treatment plan, your diagnosis, your medication list, your test results, your dates of service, or a summary of your progress. Those are part of your regular record.

Psychotherapy notes get stronger protection. They are not released to anyone — including your insurance company — without your specific written authorization, except in the narrow situations the law itself compels, such as a court order or a licensing investigation. Your health plan may not condition payment or coverage on your authorizing their release.

4When the law allows or requires sharing

Certain disclosures are permitted or required regardless of what you want. These are not discretionary and the practice cannot contract them away. The ones that arise in a behavioral health practice are:

• Serious risk to you. If there is a serious risk you will harm yourself, your clinician will act to keep you safe, which can mean contacting emergency services or someone who can help.
• Serious threat to someone else. If there is a serious threat of harm to an identifiable person, your clinician may be required to warn that person and to notify law enforcement.
• Abuse or neglect. If your clinician reasonably suspects abuse or neglect of a child, of an older adult, or of a person with a disability, the law requires a report.
• Court orders and legal process. If a court orders records released, or in response to a subpoena or other lawful process where the required protections have been satisfied.
• Health oversight. To a licensing board, or to a government agency conducting an audit, investigation, or licensure or disciplinary action.
• Public health. To public health authorities for purposes such as preventing or controlling disease, and to authorities responsible for reporting reactions or product problems.
• Law enforcement, coroners, and similar. In the specific circumstances the law defines — for example, to identify or locate a person, or to a medical examiner.
• Workers' compensation. If your care is part of a work injury claim, the practice shares what workers' compensation law requires or allows — for example, the reports the insurance carrier and the workers' compensation board need to handle the claim.
• Military, national security, and inmates. In the limited circumstances the law defines.
• Research. Only where an institutional review board has approved the research and the applicable privacy protections are in place.

5Everything else needs your written permission

Any use or disclosure not described in this notice happens only with your written authorization. That specifically includes:

• Most uses and disclosures of psychotherapy notes.
• Any use or disclosure for marketing.
• Any sale of your health information. This practice does not sell your information.
• Sharing your information with a family member, a partner, an employer, a school, or an attorney.

You can change your mind. You may revoke an authorization in writing at any time. Revoking it stops future sharing under that authorization; it cannot undo something already released while it was in effect.

6Video sessions, recordings, email and text messages

Video sessions. Sessions held by video run over a secure connection and are documented in your record exactly as an in-person session is. No electronic transmission is ever perfectly secure, and that risk is part of what you accept when you consent to telehealth.

Recording. Video sessions are recorded by default. The recording is how your session note is written from what was actually said, rather than from memory afterwards. You will see a Transcription indicator on screen for as long as recording is happening. You may ask for it to be stopped at any time — before a session or during one — and your clinician stops it at once; stopping does not affect your care. A recording is part of your clinical record, is stored privately, and is subject to everything else in this notice.

Email and text. Ordinary email and text messages are not secure and can be read in transit or on a device someone else can reach. The practice uses them for scheduling and administrative contact only, and only in the ways you have agreed to. Do not send clinical detail, and never send anything urgent by email or text — those channels are not monitored outside office hours and are not an emergency service.

Text messages

If you check the text-message box under the phone number on the intake form, Psychora Behavioral Health PC will text that number about the logistics of your care only: reminders before your appointments, the link to join a scheduled video session, and replies when you text about scheduling or trouble signing in. No clinical information is sent by text. Agreeing is optional, and it is never a condition of booking or of care.

• How often. Message frequency varies with your appointments.
• Cost. Message and data rates may apply, under your mobile plan.
• Stopping. Reply STOP to any message to opt out. You will get one message confirming it and no texts after that. Reply START to opt back in.
• Help. Reply HELP, or email info@psychorapc.com.
• Delivery. Mobile carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages.

Your number is not shared. No mobile information will be shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. Text-message opt-in data and consent are not shared with any third party. The only outside company that handles your number is the messaging provider that sends the practice's texts, under a written agreement to protect it.

7Your rights

These are yours, and exercising them costs you nothing but the reasonable cost of copies. Ask the care team, or write to the privacy officer listed in section 11.

See and get a copy of your record

You may inspect and get a copy of the record used to make decisions about your care, in paper or electronically, usually within 30 days. Psychotherapy notes are the exception — you do not have a right of access to those. Access can be limited in narrow circumstances; if it is, you will be told in writing and you may ask to have that decision reviewed.

Ask for a correction

If you believe something in your record is wrong or incomplete, you may ask in writing for it to be amended, and say why. If the request is denied you will be told in writing, and you may file a statement of disagreement that becomes part of your record.

Get a list of disclosures

You may ask for an accounting of disclosures the practice made in the six years before your request — who received your information and why. Disclosures for treatment, payment, and operations, and ones you authorized, are not included. One list in any 12 months is free.

Ask for limits

You may ask the practice to restrict what it uses or discloses. It is not required to agree to most such requests, but it will tell you plainly whether it does, and it is bound by any restriction it accepts. One restriction it must honor: if you pay in full, out of pocket, for a specific service, you may direct that the practice not tell your health plan about it.

Choose how you are contacted

You may ask to be reached at a particular number or address, or to have messages left in a particular way — or not left at all. Reasonable requests are accommodated, and you do not have to explain why.

Get a paper copy of this notice

You may ask for this notice on paper at any time, even if you already read it here, and one will be given to you.

Be told if your information is breached

If there is a breach of unsecured health information about you, you will be notified.

Name someone to act for you

A parent or guardian of a minor, or someone holding a valid health care power of attorney, may exercise these rights on your behalf, once the practice has confirmed the authority.

8What this practice must do

• Keep your health information private, and secure it as the law requires.
• Give you this notice, describing its legal duties and your rights.
• Follow the terms of the notice currently in effect.
• Notify you if a breach compromises the privacy or security of your information.
• Not use or share your information other than as described here, unless you authorize it in writing.

9How to complain

If you believe your privacy rights have been violated, you may complain to the practice, to the federal government, or to both.

10Changes to this notice

The practice may change this notice, and a changed notice applies to information it already holds as well as to information it receives afterwards. The version in effect is always the one posted at psychorapc.com/privacy-practices, and it carries the effective date at the top. You may ask for a paper copy of the current version at any time.

11Who to contact

Questions about this notice, about your record, or about how your information is handled go to the practice's privacy officer.

Some information gets protection beyond what this notice describes — state law and, for substance use treatment records, federal law impose stricter limits than HIPAA in certain circumstances. Where a stricter rule applies, the practice follows the stricter rule.