Privacy Policy

Privacy law draws a line that most therapy websites blur, so this one draws it plainly.

Two different sets of rules apply here. What you tell Barbara once you are a client is protected health information, governed by HIPAA and by Florida’s confidentiality statutes. What you type into a form on this website — before you are a client — is not. It is ordinary contact information, held carefully, but it does not carry the same legal protection.

If you read nothing else on this page, read these five things.

This policy is published by Bethesda Revive Counseling Services, LLC, a private mental-health practice in Tampa, Florida, owned and operated by Barbara M. Sosa, Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC), State of Florida.

It covers two things that are easy to confuse:

This website and everything on it — the inquiry form, the attachment quiz, and any email you send from a link here.

Clinical services — therapy sessions, Deep Focus sessions, couples work, and telehealth — which are governed by HIPAA, by Chapter 491 of the Florida Statutes, and by the Notice of Privacy Practices you receive at intake.

The practice is licensed in Florida only, and provides telehealth only to people physically located in Florida at the time of their session.

When you submit the inquiry form, the practice receives your name, email address, phone number, the state you are in, what kind of support you are looking for, whether you prefer English or Spanish, the best time to reach you, whether it is all right to leave a voicemail, and how you would like to be contacted.

The form is deliberately short and non-clinical. It asks nothing about symptoms, diagnosis, medication, or safety — by design, so that you are never invited to disclose something sensitive through a channel that cannot properly protect it.

When you take the attachment quiz, the practice receives your answers to the eight questions together with the first name and email address you enter to unlock your results. Because the answers are stored alongside your email address, they are identifiable to you. Please treat the quiz as what it is: a reflective tool, not a confidential clinical record.

Automatically, the form software records the IP address of the device used to submit a form, along with the date and time, and the web server keeps standard access logs. These are used for security and spam prevention.

When you email or call, the practice receives whatever you choose to include.

Website information is used to do the thing you asked for, and very little else — to respond to your inquiry and, if you would like, to schedule a free 15-minute consultation; to deliver your quiz results and the short email series that follows, if you asked for it; and to keep the site working, secure, and free of spam.

Your information is not sold, rented, traded, or shared with advertisers, and it is not used to build an advertising profile of you.

If you gave your email address through the quiz, every email includes an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing is honoured immediately. Unsubscribing from the quiz series has no effect on your care or on any inquiry you have made.

As of the date at the top of this page, this website runs no third-party analytics, no advertising pixels, and no social-media tracking scripts. The only cookies set are the functional ones the site needs in order to work.

If measurement tools are added later, this section will be updated before they go live, and any tool used will be configured so that it does not transmit the content of your form answers or your quiz results.

Florida adds its own protection on top of HIPAA, and in places it is the stronger of the two.

Under § 491.0147, Florida Statutes, communications between a licensed mental health counselor and a client are confidential. Under § 90.503, they are also privileged, which generally means they cannot be compelled in a legal proceeding without your consent.

Client records are maintained under Rule 64B4-9.001, Florida Administrative Code, and access to them is governed in part by § 456.057, Florida Statutes.

Confidentiality is close to absolute, but not entirely. Florida law requires or permits disclosure in the situations below, and you deserve to know them before you begin rather than after.

You authorise it in writing. You can direct that information be released, to whom, and for what purpose. Where more than one adult is in the room — couples or family work — each of them must agree in writing before the record is released.

Suspected abuse, neglect, or abandonment of a child. Reporting is mandatory under § 39.201, Florida Statutes, to the Florida Abuse Hotline at 800-962-2873.

Suspected abuse, neglect, or exploitation of a vulnerable or elderly adult. Reporting is mandatory under § 415.1034, Florida Statutes, to the same hotline.

A specific threat of serious bodily injury or death to an identifiable person. Under § 491.0147, where a client communicates such a threat and the counselor judges that the client has the apparent intent and ability to carry it out imminently, the counselor may warn the potential victim, and must disclose what is necessary to communicate the threat to a law enforcement agency.

A court order. A judge can order records released. A subpoena on its own is not the same thing, and the privilege is asserted on your behalf wherever the law allows.

A complaint or legal action you bring against the practice. If you file a civil, criminal, or licensing complaint, the privilege is waived to the extent needed to respond — and only for that action.

Payment and insurance. If you use insurance, the plan requires certain information, which may include a diagnosis. Superbills for out-of-network reimbursement necessarily carry one too.

Business associates. The electronic health record and other vendors that handle health information are bound by written agreements requiring them to protect it.

Where it is safe and practical to do so, Barbara will tell you before a disclosure is made, and talk it through with you.

A full record of services is kept for seven years after the date of last contact, as required by Rule 64B4-9.001, Florida Administrative Code. If the practice closes or relocates, records are retained for at least two years afterwards and clients are notified.

To request your record, ask in writing. Requests are answered within the timeframes set by Florida law and HIPAA, and a reasonable copying fee, capped by Florida law, may apply. Psychotherapy notes are handled separately, as described above.

Website information — inquiry submissions and quiz results — is kept only as long as it remains useful for responding to you. You can ask to have it deleted at any time, and that request will be honoured.

For clients under 18, a parent or legal guardian generally holds the right to consent to treatment and to access the record, with exceptions under Florida law. Therapy with an adolescent only works if the adolescent has some real privacy, so at the outset Barbara sets clear expectations with everyone in the family about what will and will not be shared. Concerns about safety are always shared.

Telehealth is provided under § 456.47, Florida Statutes, to clients physically located in Florida at the time of the session. Sessions run on a platform that supports HIPAA-compliant use under a business associate agreement. Sessions are not recorded by the practice, and may not be recorded by you without written consent on both sides. The privacy of your own end is yours to manage — a room where you will not be overheard, headphones, and a device others do not have open access to.

A small number of vendors handle information on the practice’s behalf. Those that touch health information operate under written business associate agreements that legally bind them to protect it: the electronic health record and client portal, and the telehealth platform.

Website vendors — the hosting provider, the form software, the scheduling tool, and any email service used for the quiz series — handle contact information rather than clinical records, and are not business associates. They are chosen for their security practices, but the distinction matters and is the reason this policy asks you to keep clinical detail off the website.

Reasonable administrative, physical, and technical safeguards are in place: encrypted transmission on this site, access controls on the record system, and written agreements with vendors. No system is perfectly secure, and nobody honest promises otherwise.

If unsecured health information is breached, notice is given as required by the HIPAA Breach Notification Rule, 45 C.F.R. §§ 164.400–414. Separately, Florida’s Information Protection Act, § 501.171, Florida Statutes, requires notice to affected Florida residents within 30 days of determining that a breach of personal information has occurred, and notice to the Florida Attorney General where 500 or more residents are affected.

This website is intended for adults. The practice does not knowingly collect information online from children under 13. If you believe a child has submitted information through this site, contact the office and it will be deleted.

You can unsubscribe from any email at any time. You can ask what website information is held about you and ask for it to be deleted. You can skip the form altogether and call the office instead. And once you are a client, you can exercise any of the health-information rights listed above by putting the request in writing.

None of these choices will affect the care you receive or how you are treated.

Start with Barbara. Most concerns are resolved directly, and raising one will never affect your care.

Practice privacy contact
Barbara M. Sosa, LMHC · Bethesda Revive Counseling Services, LLC
4100 W. Kennedy Blvd., Suite 310, Tampa, FL 33609
813-535-4594 · Barbara@bethesda-revive.com

To file a HIPAA complaint with the federal government
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights
200 Independence Avenue SW, Washington, DC 20201
877-696-6775 · hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/complaints

To file a complaint about a Florida licensee
Florida Department of Health, Consumer Services Unit
4052 Bald Cypress Way, Bin C-75, Tallahassee, FL 32399
850-245-4339

You will not be retaliated against for filing a complaint.

This policy may change. The “last updated” date at the top of the page always reflects the current version. Material changes to how health information is used will also be reflected in the Notice of Privacy Practices, which is the controlling document for anything clinical.