Privacy

Maximum Potential is committed to protecting the privacy of all personal information that is collected to enable us to provide quality services to you, your child, or your agency. In order to achieve this, it is our policy to collect, use, and disclose personal information responsibly, limit the information we collect to what we need and to make our policies available to you. 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 personal characteristics (e.g., gender, age, home address or phone number, ethnic background, family status), health (e.g., health history, health conditions, health services received) or activities and views (e.g., opinions expressed by an individual, an opinion or evaluation of an individual). Personal information is to be contrasted with business information, (e.g., an individual’s business address and telephone number), which is not protected by privacy legislation.

WHO WE ARE

Maximum Potential includes the principle owners and service providers. To assist us in providing services, we use consultants that may, in the course of their duties, have limited access to personal information we hold, such as: accountants, lawyers, business consultants, students, delivery persons, and information technology advisers. We restrict their access to any personal information we hold as much as is reasonably possible and request their assurances that they follow appropriate privacy principles.

WE COLLECT PERSONAL INFORMATION: Primary Purposes About Clients

Our primary purpose for collecting personal information is to provide applied behaviour analysis services, speech and language services, and/or professional consultative services. For example, we collect information about our client’s health history that will be relevant to communication disorders or behaviour challenges and assist us in offering effective intervention options. A second primary purpose is to obtain a baseline of our client’s skills to track how that changes over time. It would be rare for us to collect such information without our client’s 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 is passing a message on from our client and we have no reason to believe that the message is not genuine).

About Members of the General Public

Our primary purposes for collecting contact information about members of the public are to provide notice of special events (e.g., a conference or seminar) or to make them aware of services in general or our services in particular. We try to obtain consent before using any such personal contact information, but where this is not possible, we will, upon request, immediately remove any personal information from our distribution list. On social media and via email, we only collect the personal information you provide and only use that information for the purpose you gave it to us (e.g., to respond to your email message).

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 get in touch with them for employment purposes. It is rare for us to collect such information without prior consent, but it might happen in the case of health emergency (e.g., an infectious disease outbreak) or to investigate a possible breach of law (e.g., if a theft were to occur in our clinics or business offices). We also collect information in order to do performance appraisals, provide feedback to students’ instructors, or write references if requested.

RELATED AND SECONDARY PURPOSES FOR COLLECTING PERSONAL INFORMATION

Maximum Potential also collects, uses, and discloses information for purposes related to or secondary to our primary purposes. The most common examples are as follows:

To secure payment for goods or services.
To advise clients of the need for follow-up services.
To advise clients and others of special events or opportunities (e.g., a seminar, a new service, a new product).
To evaluate our services and the performance of our staff. This may involve external consultants (e.g., auditors, lawyers, practice consultants, voluntary accreditation programs) to do audits and continuing quality improvement reviews of our services, including reviewing client files and interviewing our staff.
To allow us to meet our regulatory obligations. The College of Psychologists and Behaviour Analysts of Ontario (CPBAO) and the College of Audiologists and Speech-Language Pathologists of Ontario (CASLPO) may inspect our records and interview our staff as a part of their regulatory activities in the public interest. Various government agencies (e.g., Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, Privacy Commissioner, Human Rights Commission, etc.) have the authority to review our files and interview our staff as a part of their mandates. External regulators have their own strict privacy obligations. In these circumstances, we may consult with professionals (e.g., lawyers, accountants) who will investigate the matter and report back to us.
To provide information to third party payers (private insurance, Assistive Devices Program, government entities, etc.) when they pay for the goods and services you receive from us. We will obtain your consent to disclose your personal information in these instances except in instances where there is legislative authority to collect, use or disclose the information.
In the future, to answer any questions that you may have about the service you received, once it is concluded. The College of Audiologists and Speech-Language Pathologists requires that we keep records for at least 10 years following your last intervention or in the case of a child, 10 years past the child’s 18th birthday. This is also required by the College of Psychologists and Behaviour Analysts of Ontario and the Behavior Analyst Certification Board (BACB) for any behaviour analytic services.

If you choose not to be part of some of these related or secondary business purposes, please let us know so that we may take appropriate measures where possible.

Protecting Personal Information

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

Paper information is either under supervision or secured in a locked or restricted area.
Electronic hardware is either under supervision or secured in a locked or restricted area. Our computers are password protected. Our cell phones are digital as these signals are more difficult to intercept.
Paper information is sealed and transmitted by reputable companies.
Special care is taken to ensure privacy when transmitting electronic information. Where we are unsure of the security of the electronic transfer of information, identifying information is removed.
We are trained to collect, use and disclose personal information only as necessary to fulfill their duties and in accordance with our privacy policy.
External consultants and agencies with access to personal information must enter into privacy agreements with us.

RETENTION AND DESTRUCTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

The College of Psychologists and Behaviour Analysts of Ontario (CPBAO) and the College of Audiologists and Speech-Language Pathologists of Ontario (CASLPO) requires that we retain our client records for 10 years past the last visit or in the case of a child, for 10 years past the child’s 18th birthday. The Behavior Analyst Certification Board also requires file retention and secure destruction. We destroy our files within 3 months of that time. These files include your contact information. Contact information for members of the public is kept for 3 years unless removal is requested earlier.

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 will need to confirm your identity, if we do not know you, before providing you with this access. We reserve the right to charge a nominal fee for such requests.

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 our professional opinions. 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 have made a mistake, we will still agree to include in our file 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 OR A CONCERN?

If you wish to make a formal complaint about our privacy practices, you may make it in writing to our office. We will acknowledge receipt of your complaint, ensure that it is investigated promptly and that you are provided with a formal decision and reasons in writing.

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 appropriate regulatory body:

College of Psychologists and Behaviour Analysts of Ontario
110 Eglinton Avenue West • Suite 500 • Toronto, Ontario M4R 1A3
Telephone: 416.961.8817 • 1.800.489.8388 • Fax: 416.961.2635
Email: invhear@cpo.on.ca
Website: www.cpbao.ca/public/complaints-reports-to-the-college/

College of Audiologists and Speech-Language Pathologists
Ordre des audiolgistes et des orthophonistes de l’Ontario
160 Bloor Street East • Suite 1125 • Toronto, Ontario • M4W 1B9
Telephone: 416.975.5347 • 1.800.993.9459 • Fax: 416.975.8394
Website: www.caslpo.com

Behavior Analyst Certification Board
7950 Shaffer Parkway
Littleton • CO 80127 • USA
Fax • 1-720-468-4145
Website (for reporting): www.bacb.com/ethics/#ethics_reporting