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.

This notice applies to East Bay Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery, 80 Grand Ave, Suite 810, Oakland, CA 94612. It covers the health information the practice creates and keeps about you: your record of care, your diagnoses and treatment, your photographs and imaging, and your billing information. The law calls this protected health information. This notice tells you how that information may be used, when it may be shared outside the practice, and what you can do about it.

It applies to Douglas Chin, M.D., F.A.C.S., C.A.Q.H., to the staff who work at the office, and to anyone the practice allows to see your record while working on its behalf. Where the practice sends your health information to a company that works for it, that company is a business associate of the practice and is bound by a written contract to protect your information. That is a different thing from the companies whose content this website loads. Google supplies the type on every page, the office map in the footer, and the advertising measurement on the pages the practice advertises. Google is not a business associate of the practice, has signed no such contract, and is never sent your health information. See Information collected through this website below.

If you came here to use one of your rights, they are set out under Your rights below, each with the step you need to take. To reach the office about any of them, call 510-451-6950, Monday to Friday, 9:00am to 5:00pm.

How we use and share your health information for care, payment and running the practice

Treatment

We use your information to plan and give you care. Dr. Chin performs your procedures himself, so most of your record stays inside this office. Larger operations are done at an accredited surgical facility, including Redwood Surgery Center, Oakland Surgery Center and The Surgery Center of Alta Bates Summit Medical Center. For those we send the surgical team, the anesthesia provider and the facility what they need to treat you safely, including your history, your medications, your allergies and the plan for the operation. Those centers are separate businesses. They keep their own records and issue their own privacy notices, and what they do with your information is covered by their notice rather than by this one. If you were referred here by another physician, or if you need care we do not provide, we share your information with that physician. We may send an order to a laboratory or a pathologist and receive the result back.

Payment

We use your information to be paid for your care. If your treatment is medically necessary and you are covered by Medicare, Anthem Blue Cross / Blue Shield, UnitedHealthcare or Aetna, or by another plan that covers you, we send that insurer your diagnosis, the procedure performed and the dates of service so the claim can be paid. We may contact your insurer before treatment to confirm coverage or to get an authorization. If your care is a workers compensation claim, we bill the claims administrator. If you pay out of pocket, including the $100 consultation fee that is credited toward your procedure, we use your information to bill you, to collect what you owe and to keep the account straight. If your care is being paid for later out of an accident settlement, which is called treating on a lien, we share what the lien and the claim require with your attorney and with the parties handling it.

Health care operations

We use your information to run the practice and to keep the quality of care high. That includes reviewing outcomes of the procedures performed here, checking that our records and billing are complete and accurate, training staff, arranging audits and legal or accounting advice, and general business management. Where the law lets us, we use only the information needed for the task.

Appointment reminders, follow up and treatment options

We may contact you to remind you of an appointment, to give you pre-operative or post-operative instructions, or to tell you about a treatment option or a health-related service that may interest you. Because the practice publishes no email address, these contacts are normally made by telephone at 510-451-6950. You may ask us to reach you a different way. See your right to confidential communications below.

Family, friends and others involved in your care

If you agree, or if you are present and do not object, we may share information with a family member, a friend, or anyone else you name who is helping with your care or helping pay for it. If you are not able to agree, for example straight after surgery, we share only what our professional judgment says is in your best interest and only what that person needs. In a disaster we may share information with a relief agency so your family can be told where you are.

Uses and disclosures we may make without your authorization

Federal and California law allow us, and in some cases require us, to use or share your information without your permission in the situations below. In each case we release only what the law permits.

As required by law. When a federal, state or local law requires the disclosure, we make it.
Public health activities. To prevent or control disease, injury or disability, to report births and deaths, to report a reaction to a medication or a problem with a medical device, and to notify a person who may have been exposed to a disease.
Victims of abuse, neglect or domestic violence. To a government agency authorized to receive the report, where the law requires it or permits it and we believe the disclosure is necessary to prevent serious harm. We tell you we have made the report unless telling you would put you at risk.
Health oversight activities. To an agency that audits, investigates, licenses or inspects health care, including a state licensing board and the agencies that oversee the health care and workers compensation systems.
Judicial and administrative proceedings. In response to a court order or an administrative order. We may also respond to a subpoena, a discovery request or another lawful process, but only where either you have been told about the request or a court order is in place to protect your information.
Law enforcement. To respond to a court order, warrant or similar process, to identify or locate a suspect, fugitive, witness or missing person, about a victim of a crime in the narrow circumstances the law allows, about a death we believe resulted from criminal conduct, and about a crime committed on these premises.
Coroners, medical examiners and funeral directors. To identify a person who has died, to determine a cause of death, or to let a funeral director carry out their duties.
Organ and tissue donation. To organizations that handle organ, eye or tissue procurement, banking or transplantation, where you are a donor.
Research. Only where a review board or a privacy board has approved the research and the privacy protections around it, where the information is limited to what the researcher needs to prepare a study, or where the information no longer identifies you. Research that would identify you needs your written authorization.
To avert a serious threat to health or safety. Where we believe in good faith that the disclosure is needed to prevent or lessen a serious and imminent threat to you or to someone else, and the disclosure goes to a person able to prevent the threat.
Specialized government functions. For military and veterans activities, national security and intelligence activities, protective services for the President and others, medical suitability determinations for certain government service, and for the health and safety of an inmate or of a correctional institution if you are in custody.
Workers compensation. As authorized by 45 CFR 164.512(l) and as California workers compensation law allows and requires.

Work injuries and medical-legal evaluations

Workers compensation work is routine at this practice, so this last one deserves plain language. If you are treated here for a work injury, we send reports about your injury, your treatment and your ability to work to your employer, to the claims administrator, to the workers compensation insurer, to your attorney if you have one, and to the state, as that system requires. You cannot keep those reports private and still have the claim pay for your care. Once your information is in the workers compensation system it is governed by that system's rules, not by this notice.

Dr. Chin is a Qualified Medical Evaluator for the State of California. He performs Qualified and Agreed Medical Evaluations and testifies as a non-treating expert. When he acts in one of those roles he is not your treating physician. The examination and any report from it are prepared for the parties to the claim and go to them, and to the court or the board if the matter is heard. That is what the examination is for. If you are seen for an evaluation rather than for treatment, ask the office before the examination whether your visit is for treatment or for an evaluation, and who will receive the report.

Uses and disclosures that need your written authorization

Any use or sharing of your health information not described in this notice will be made only with your written authorization. That includes the three below.

Marketing

Most uses of your information to market a product or service to you require your written authorization. Your photographs, your name and anything you say about your care may not be used in advertising, on this website, on social media, or in any other promotional material unless you sign an authorization allowing it. Patient comments already published on this website appear without a name or any other detail that would identify who wrote them. If a comment on this site is yours and you would like it taken down, call the office and we will remove it. If the practice would be paid by someone else for a marketing communication, the authorization will say so before you sign.

Sale of your health information

The practice does not sell your health information. Any disclosure that would count as a sale under the law requires your written authorization, and that authorization will state that the practice would be paid.

Psychotherapy notes

Psychotherapy notes are given extra protection by law. If any such notes are ever kept about you, they may not be used or shared without your written authorization, except in the few situations the law specifically allows.

Taking back an authorization

If you sign an authorization you may take it back at any time. Put it in writing and mail it or bring it to East Bay Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery, 80 Grand Ave, Suite 810, Oakland, CA 94612. Once we receive it we will stop the use or disclosure it covered. We cannot undo anything already done while the authorization was in force. Where the authorization was obtained as a condition of insurance coverage, the law lets the insurer keep the right to contest the claim.

Information collected through this website

This website is not a patient portal and is not a secure way to send health information. Please use it to ask for a call back, and do not put anything in it you would not say in a first phone call.

The request forms on this site, including the callback form and the forms on the pages the practice advertises, ask for your name, your telephone number, your email address, the procedure you are asking about, when you would prefer to be seen, and anything you choose to write in the message box. The form for attorneys asks instead for your name, your firm, your email address, your telephone number and a short description of the matter. Everything in those boxes is what you choose to give us.

When you send a request, two things happen. The request is emailed to the practice's own office inbox, and a copy is written to a file on the web server that is not reachable from the internet. That copy also records the date and time and the internet (IP) address the request came from, and it is deleted 90 days after it arrives. The company that builds and hosts this website for the practice runs that server and can reach the stored copy, so it is a business associate of the practice and is bound by a written contract to protect your information. It is not sent what you wrote: it receives only a short receipt saying that a request arrived and which form it came from.

If you reached the practice through one of its advertisements, the request also records the click identifier Google placed in the link you followed, and which advertised page you came from. The practice may later use that identifier to tell Google that a request was made, so it can see which advertisements work. What would be sent names no procedure and identifies no patient.

Booking online is different. The book-online links leave this website for MyPatientVisit, the practice's scheduling service. What you enter there is collected by that service under its own terms and privacy notice, not by this one.

Information you send through this website is treated as confidential from the moment it arrives, and it is never sold.

Where California law protects you more

California's Confidentiality of Medical Information Act, Civil Code section 56 and following, and other state laws are stricter than federal law in places. Where state law gives you more protection, or gives you a right federal law does not, the practice follows state law. In practice this means the following.

Some kinds of information carry extra protection under state law and generally need your specific written permission before they are shared, even where federal law would let us share them without asking. That includes HIV test results, mental health records, records of treatment for alcohol or drug use, genetic test results, and information about reproductive or gender-affirming care.
State law limits sharing your information for marketing more tightly than federal law does, and it restricts sharing it with employers. That restriction does not cover a work injury: if you are treated here under a workers compensation claim, reports about that injury go to your employer and to the claims administrator as the workers compensation system requires. See Work injuries and medical-legal evaluations above.
State law gives you access to your records on a shorter timetable than federal law and caps what you can be charged for copies. See your right to see and get a copy of your record below.
If you are 12 or older and received care that state law lets a minor consent to on their own, state law limits what we may tell a parent or guardian.

Your rights

Written requests under this section should be mailed or brought to the practice at East Bay Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery, 80 Grand Ave, Suite 810, Oakland, CA 94612. To ask how to make a request, call 510-451-6950, Monday to Friday, 9:00am to 5:00pm. The office is closed Saturday and Sunday. The practice publishes no email address, so please call or write to the address above. The request forms on this website reach the office by email, so use them to ask for a call back rather than to send health information. If you give an email address on one of them, the office may reply to you there.

To ask for a restriction on how your information is used and shared

You may ask us to limit what we use or share for treatment, payment or running the practice, and to limit what we share with a family member or friend involved in your care. Make the request in writing. Say what you want limited, whether the limit applies to use, to sharing, or to both, and who it applies to. We are not required to agree, and we will tell you plainly if we do not. There is one restriction we must accept: if you pay in full out of pocket for a service, you may require that we not send information about that service to your health plan, and we will not send it, unless a law requires us to.

To get confidential communications

You may ask us to contact you a particular way or at a particular place, for example on a mobile number only, or by mail to an address other than your home, if our usual way of reaching you would put you at risk or you simply prefer another. Ask in writing or call the office. Tell us how or where to reach you. We will accommodate any reasonable request and we will not ask you why you are making it.

To see and get a copy of your record

You may inspect and get a copy of the records used to make decisions about your care, including your billing records. Ask in writing. If we keep the record electronically, you may ask for an electronic copy and we will provide it in the form you ask for if we can readily produce it. You may also ask us to send the copy to a person you name. Federal law gives us up to 30 days to answer. California law gives us less time than that and limits what we can charge, and where state law is better for you we follow state law. We may charge a reasonable cost-based fee within that cap. We may deny access in a small number of situations the law defines. If we deny access, we will tell you in writing why, and in most cases you may have that decision reviewed by another licensed professional we choose.

To ask us to amend your record

If you believe something in your record is wrong or incomplete, you may ask us to amend it. Ask in writing and say why the change should be made. We will answer within 60 days. We may deny the request, for example where we did not create the record or where we find the record accurate and complete. If we deny it, we will tell you in writing why, and you may file a written statement of disagreement. Your statement, and our response, become part of the record and go out with it in future disclosures.

To get an accounting of disclosures

You may ask for a list of the times we shared your information in the six years before your request. The list leaves out disclosures made for treatment, payment or running the practice, disclosures you authorized, disclosures to you, and a few other categories the law excludes. Ask in writing and say the period you want. We will answer within 60 days. One list in any twelve months is free. We will tell you the cost before we fill any further request in that period, and you may withdraw or narrow the request to avoid the charge.

To get a paper copy of this notice

You may ask for a paper copy of this notice at any time, even if you agreed to receive it electronically. Ask at the front desk or call 510-451-6950 and we will hand you or mail you a copy.

To be told about a breach

You have the right to be notified if there is a breach of your unsecured health information. We will notify you as the law requires. You do not have to ask for this.

To complain without being penalized

You may complain to the practice and to the federal government, and nothing will happen to your care because you did. How to complain is set out at the end of this notice.

Our duties

We are required by law to protect the privacy of your health information.
We are required to give you this notice of our legal duties and privacy practices, and to follow the terms of the notice currently in effect.
We are required to notify you following a breach of your unsecured health information.
We reserve the right to change this notice. A changed notice applies to information we already hold as well as to information we create or receive later.
If we change this notice, the new version is posted on this page and a copy is posted and kept at the office. You may ask for a paper copy of the current notice at any visit.

How to complain

If you believe your privacy rights have been violated, tell the practice. Call 510-451-6950 and say you are calling about a privacy concern, or write to the practice at East Bay Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery, 80 Grand Ave, Suite 810, Oakland, CA 94612. Describe what happened and how you would like it put right.

You may also complain to the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Complaints go to the Office for Civil Rights and must normally be filed within 180 days of when you knew about the problem. File online at hhs.gov/hipaa/filing-a-complaint, or write to the Office for Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 200 Independence Avenue SW, Washington, DC 20201, or call 1-800-368-1019.

You will not be penalized, refused care, treated differently, or retaliated against in any way for making a complaint, whether you make it to the practice or to the government.

Who to contact for more information

For any question about this notice, about how your information is handled, or about using one of the rights above, contact the practice at East Bay Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery, 80 Grand Ave, Suite 810, Oakland, CA 94612, telephone 510-451-6950, Monday to Friday, 9:00am to 5:00pm. The office is closed Saturday and Sunday. The practice publishes no email address, so please call or write to the address above. The request forms on this website reach the office by email, so use them to ask for a call back rather than to send health information. If you give an email address on one of them, the office may reply to you there.

Effective date

This notice is effective as of September 7, 2026. It stays in effect until the practice issues a new one. If we change this notice, the new version will carry a new effective date, will be posted on this page and at the office, and will apply to health information we already hold as well as to information we create or receive after that date.

Office hours
Monday	9:00am to 5:00pm
Tuesday	9:00am to 5:00pm
Wednesday	9:00am to 5:00pm
Thursday	9:00am to 5:00pm
Friday	9:00am to 5:00pm
Saturday and Sunday	Closed