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Privacy
Policy Last updated: November 13, 2003
As a user of this site, you take on certain risks and responsibilities.
You also have the right to know how we protect your privacy and ensure
your confidentiality and what you should expect from us. This site and
Healthvision have partnered together to create this Web site. This site
and Healthvision are responsible for the editorial content, products and
services offered on this site and Healthvision maintains the site on our
behalf.
Our Commitment to You Healthvision
is extremely committed to protecting your privacy and is a founding member
of Hi-Ethics (Health Internet Ethics), a coalition of health information
Web sites that has developed ethical principles for offering Internet
health services to consumers. The principles are designed to help ensure
that Internet health services reflect high-quality and ethical standards,
provide health information that is trustworthy and up-to-date, clearly
identify online advertising, disclose sponsorships or other financial
relationships, keep personally identifiable information private and
secure, and empower consumers to distinguish online health services that
follow the principles from those that do not. Healthvision strives to
ensure that the operation of this Web site complies with the principles,
including those related to privacy as further described below.
Your Role, Responsibilities and
Risks
- You need to be an informed user of this site. Please read all our
policies in full so you know how our site works and how you interact
with the site.
- Pay special attention to your risks as a user. Web site users open
themselves up to certain risks, such as data collection.
- Understand how we collect data and how it is used. It is our goal to
protect your personal information from misuse. We do, however, offer
programs that collect data for special reasons, such as research,
scientific studies, and statistics, in which case you may be interested
in participating.
- Be aware that use of this site, its services, programs, and the
health information on it cannot replace nor is it intended to serve as a
healthcare provider-patient relationship. You must always consult with a
professional for diagnosis and treatment for specific health problems.
What You Should Expect From Us
- We will strive to maintain your privacy, confidentiality and
security at all times.
- It is our goal to ensure your trust and confidence by providing you
with as much information as we can about data collection procedures and
information when needed.
- We will not sell or share any information you provide, nor will we
intentionally use your data without your permission, unless for purposes
of maintaining the site or for reviewing the site's use.
- We will make every effort to notify you accordingly of all data
collection practices.
- It is our intention to clearly inform you when your risks or privacy
may change during the course of using this site.
- We will make every attempt to tell you when our privacy policy is no
longer in effect and another one is, such as when you use an integrated
program that is being operated on another Web site with a different
privacy policy.
- It is our goal to make you aware when you leave our site for
another.
- We want you to know that this system operates on a secure server and
your personal and professional information and health-related personal
information is encrypted before it is transmitted. Encryption is a form
of scrambling and de-scrambling that ensures that no unauthorized person
can see your information.
- We will separate health information content from advertising and
sponsorship programs so you can distinguish between the two.
- Where health professionals may interact with consumers, we will make
every effort to tell you if this establishes a patient-provider
relationship and make available the credentials and qualifications of
professionals.
- We will not accept or show you health information content,
advertising, sponsored programs, or services that we know to contain
false or misleading information or that promote ineffective or dangerous
products.
Our Security Measures We
want your personal information to remain as secure as possible; our
business depends on it. We use encryption practices to help insure the
integrity and privacy of the personal information and/or health-related
personal information you provide to us. As an added security precaution,
all personal information and/or health-related personal information are
kept on servers with firewalls that meet or exceed industry standards to
prevent intruders from gaining access. Although we make every reasonable
effort to protect personal information and health-related personal
information from loss, misuse, or alteration by third parties, you should
be aware that there is always some risk involved in transmitting
information via the Internet and that hackers or thieves do find ways to
thwart security systems.
Changes in our Privacy Policy
It is our goal to use personal information and health-related personal
information in the manner described in the privacy policy that is in
effect when your information is collected. We do, however, reserve the
right to change the terms of this privacy policy at any time and will post
revisions to our site. If at any point, personal information or
health-related information is to be used differently from those practices
stated in the privacy policy in effect when your data was colleted, we
will notify you. You will be given the choice to opt-in to any additional
uses or disclosures of your personal information.
About the Information We Collect
We understand that the personally identifiable information
(PII) and personally identifiable health information (PIHI) you
provide during your visit to our site is highly sensitive and you may have
concerns about sharing such information with us. It is our goal to protect
your privacy and we strive to develop practices and policies to safeguard
your personal and health-related personal information.
At different places on our site, you may be asked to volunteer your
name, e-mail, address and telephone number. We refer to this type of
information as personally identifiable information (PII) because it can be
used to identify or contact you. When this information is combined with
any information on your health or medical status, we refer to this
information as personally identifiable health information (PIHI). We often
collect information on site use that has nothing to do with you as an
individual, only as an anonymous user of the site. We call this
information "aggregate information." We intend to use the personal
information, health-related personal information, and aggregate
information only for the purposes for which it was provided.
Some personal information and health-related personal information is
needed to use this site, and we ask that you provide it with the knowledge
that it will be used to enhance your experience. This information is kept
confidential. We do offer special data collection programs that you can
"opt-in" to use, in some cases to receive e-mail on health topics or to
participate in a new service. For opt-in programs we provide you, when
applicable, with detailed information on:
- Who is collecting the data
- What data are collected
- Why and how the data are transferred to a third party
- How the data are being used
- How long the data are being collected
- Who has access to the data
- What revenue that is generated from data use in relation to
advertisers and sponsors
- How to opt-out of data collection.
Please note that Healthvision does not actually collect any personally
identifiable health information (PIHI). Any of this information you
voluntarily provide to us is collected only by WellMed, a third-party
content provider, and their use of personally identifiable information is
governed by WellMed's privacy policy.
Where this Information Is Collected
We collect information about you at several places throughout
the site. You will be informed on how this information is colleted at that
time. You will also have the ability to opt-in to information collection
when you enter the site or use a service. Most information is collected in
the following instances:
Registration In
order to have access to all of the services and content available on our
site, you are required to complete a registration form that requests
certain information, such as name, telephone number and e-mail address.
In addition, you are asked during registration to tell us about health
topics that you are interested in. We offer specialized registration for
certain programs, events, and classes that may request some or all of
the above information.
We may use your registration information to send you an e-mail
confirming your registration with our site, to respond to questions from
you, or to notify you if there is a problem with any order for goods or
services that you placed. We may also, from time to time, send e-mails,
with your permission, on special promotions or newsletters we think may
be of interest to you.
Interactive Services/Tools
Some of the interactive tools on our site ask you for
personally identifiable information (PII) and personally
identifiable health information (PIHI). Specifically, our
health risk assessment tools may ask for information on your personal
and/or family medical history including height, weight, blood pressure,
history of certain conditions and/or diseases and medication history.
Our healthcare professional directory may ask you for information on
your insurance plan and geographic location in order to identify listed
professionals in your area. The health risk assessment tools use the
personal health information you provide to generate a personal health
record to help you manage your health. Your personal health record is
kept strictly confidential and can only be accessed by using your
password and login ID. We will make every effort not to use or disclose
your personal health record to any one without your express consent. In
some cases, you can permit your physician, pharmacist or other
healthcare-related professional to have access to your personal health
record.
WellMed, Inc. is contracted to provide the health risk assessment
tools on this site. When you select to use a tool, you will in fact be
working on WellMed's site and it will collect your data and return the
results directly to you via our servers. In all instances where a
WellMed tool is used, you will have access to WellMed's privacy policy
and information on how the tool works and when it was last
evaluated.
Chat Rooms/Bulletin Boards As a service to
our users, we may feature chat rooms/bulletin boards where users with
similar medical conditions can share information and support one
another. In addition, we may also offer online discussions on a variety
of topics moderated by medical experts. You should be aware that any
information shared in a chat room/bulletin board is public information
and you should think carefully before disclosing any personal and/or
health-related personal information in any chat room/bulletin board.
Online Shopping When this service is
offered on this site and you purchase nonprescription products and
services from us, such as ordering flowers for delivery to a local
hospital, we will request that you provide your name, e-mail address,
credit card number and expiration date, phone number and billing and
shipping addresses.
If you order prescription drugs or medical equipment, we will ask for
all of the information above, as well as the information that you would
ordinarily provide to your pharmacist, including your prescribing
doctor's name, your residential address, your gender and birth date, any
drug allergies and existing medical conditions. If applicable, we will
also ask for your health insurance information including the name,
address and telephone number of your insurer and your member
identification number (which may be your social security number). We may
also ask for additional information about your current prescriptions and
medical history. This information will help us provide you with the
necessary information to make the safest and most effective use of your
prescription medication or equipment.
This information will be kept in the strictest confidence. We will
make every effort to maintain the privacy and security of this
information at all times.
Our Site Uses Cookies
In addition to collecting information that you submit to us, we also
rely on "cookies." A cookie is a numeric code that a Web site transfers to
your hard drive for record-keeping purposes. Every computer is assigned a
different cookie, but our cookie does not contain or collect your name or
other personal identifying information. When you revisit our site, the
cookie allows us to recognize you, your interests, and your preferences.
We also use cookies to help track the level of interest in different
features on our site and to compile data that can help us improve our
content.
Your browser software can be set to reject all cookies,
including cookies from our site. Most browsers offer instructions on how
to reset the browser to reject cookies in the help section of the toolbar.
If you reject our cookie, certain functions and conveniences of the site
may not work properly. You do not have to accept our cookie in order to
productively use our site. If you accept our cookie, we will never link
the cookie to personal information and/or health-related personal
information you provide to us. We will not allow other sites or third
parties to use our cookies.
How We Use Your Personal
Information We continually seek new ways to maintain
your trust as a user and improve our offerings. To provide new and better
services, we tend to monitor user traffic patterns and try to analyze what
our users like and do not like about our current offerings so we can
design better services for you. We may also use certain information for
testing purposes, site development and planning, and during the normal
course of maintaining the site. When you use our site, you automatically
allow us to collect this information. In these cases, researchers,
business analysts, system designers, and others may have access to the
data we collect.
We do not intend to use or disclose any personal information or
health-related personal information you provide on our site to an
unrelated third party without your express permission, except as explained
in this section. You should know that there are circumstances when, in the
ordinary course of business, we will share some information about you with
a related third party.
- We have relationships with different vendors and suppliers
that ship products ordered on our site directly to our customers. In
these cases, we provide to the vendor the information necessary to
fulfill your order, such as the items ordered, your name, and shipping
address. We require these partners to adhere to our privacy policy and
have discussed with them that they are not to use our customer
information for any other purpose.
- If you have insurance coverage for your prescriptions, your
insurance company or prescription benefit manager may have access to
information about your orders so they can process your benefits or
assist you with your prescription orders, if necessary. This information
is shared in accordance with the terms of your health plan and the
information remains confidential.
- We may also share aggregate statistical information on our
users, sales, traffic patterns and site usage with our business partners
and sponsors. There is nothing in this information that could be used to
identify or contact you.
- We may, from time to time, contract with vendors to provide
specific services, such as data analysis, data storage, e-mail
processing, customer service, sweepstakes or special promotions. We ask
vendors to adhere to our confidentiality standards and do not permit a
vendor to use our customer information for any other purpose. In many of
these instances, you will be given the opportunity to opt-in to this
collection of information and can opt-out at any time.
- We may share registration data with business partners that
maintain a co-branded service or content, only with your affirmative
consent. For more information on co-branded sites, read the information
below on our relationships with third parties.
- In certain limited circumstances, we may be legally
compelled to release your personal information in response to a court
order, subpoena, search warrant, law or regulation. In the event that we
are compelled to disclose personal information and/or health-related
personal information to a third party, we will notify you unless doing
so would violate the law or court order. We also reserve the right to
cooperate with law enforcement authorities in investigating and
prosecuting users that violate our rules or engage in behavior that is
harmful (or illegal) to other users.
Our Relationship with Third Parties
Where third parties such as sponsors, information providers,
and health assessment software tools providers, have access to
health-related personally identifiable information from this Web site, our
agreements with these third parties will follow these privacy principles
in giving you notice and choice with respect to their access and use.
Where we have relationships with third parties, we will adopt procedures
to tell you if third parties have access to personally identifiable
information about you from our site. We will take appropriate precautions
to prevent inadvertent disclosures of personally identifiable information
to third parties and will take immediate steps to eliminate such
disclosures, if they occur, once they have come to our attention.
At present, there is only one third-party, health assessment software
tool on this Web site. My HealthQuotient™ by WellMed is a personally
identifiable health information self-assessment software tool that appears
on the Site as part of the "MyHealth" section. As described on the WellMed
Web site, the tool "Assesses your overall health status, identifies risks
and delivers personalized information and recommendations relevant to your
specific needs." The personally identifiable information that you input
into the tool will not be disclosed to any third party by WellMed or VHA.
Again, please note that VHA does not collect any personally identifiable
health information. Any of this information you voluntarily provide to us
is collected by WellMed, and their use of personally identifiable
information is governed by WellMed's Privacy Policy. Also, if you elect to
"opt-in" to receive e-mail communications from VHA, please understand that
these communications are coming from WellMed on our behalf.
If you wish to have your personally identifiable health information
removed from the WellMed database, you may do so by submitting a written
request to WellMed. WellMed will remove personal information only at the
request of an authorized user of their products. In order to verify that
it is the authorized user requesting removal of their personal
information, WellMed requires you to send a signed statement, including
your name, address, e-mail address and birth date, to the address below
authorizing WellMed to remove your personal information from their active
databases and other readily searchable media.
WellMed, Inc. Attn: Record Removal 520 NW Davis
St. Suite 300 Portland, OR 97209
WellMed will notify you by e-mail after your personal information has
been removed.
Additionally, we work with several types of third-party vendors,
including those that provide products and services that we integrate to
our site, sponsors that provide us revenue through logo and link placement
on our site, advertising companies that serve up advertisement programs
for the site, and organizations that maintain this site. We request that
third-party vendors supply us with information on their security
procedures, and we evaluate them periodically to ensure that they are
using data in the agreed upon way.
You should know that our relationship with some third-party vendors
provide us with revenues based on the number of users who view an
advertisement or use a sponsored or co-branded program. These revenues are
based on the use of a site and not on you as an individual. In some cases
we also receive revenue from the use of external services, such as buying
flowers online or other such services, and may get a commission on
specific purchases made online. In addition, we may allow third-party
vendors to buy aggregate data collected on our site but that data cannot
be used to identify you.
There are three types of relationships that differ from our standard
business partner relationship in which we license content or a product for
integration. These exceptions are:
Sponsored or Co-branded Sites We allow
other companies to make services and/or content available to you,
sometimes on a sponsored or co-branded basis. To access the services on
a sponsored or co-branded site, you may have to complete an online
registration form in addition to the registration you completed for us.
Whenever you provide registration information on sponsored or co-branded
sites, data can be collected. You should read the individual privacy
policies of sponsored or co-branded sites. Reading the policies will
help you make an informed decision on whether or not you want to use the
site.
Advertising Servers We may have relationships
with third-party advertising servers to display advertisements on our
site. If you click on an advertisement while on our site, you will be
taken to another site where your risk and privacy change. These
third-party ad servers may use cookies to collect non-personal
information on your preferences and interests via the advertisement you
decide to view. We do not give them access to non-personal information
that we might collect on our site unless they agree not to use that
information in combination with information they already possess to
identify our users. We do not intentionally share with third party ad
servers any personal or health-related personal information that you
share with us.
You should know that we might allow advertising to be coordinated
with health information content on our site. This happens through
linking up identification codes with an ad and a health topic. In no way
is your use of this site and the health information you view directly
connected with advertising.
External Links We feature external links
to other Web sites that we believe you might find useful; however, we do
not endorse these sites. Additionally, unless otherwise noted in
this section, links to other sites are provided strictly for
informational purposes, and are not based on any fees or reimbursements
paid to Healthvision for “clicks.” We are not responsible for
the privacy practices of these external sites. We will make every effort
to notify you when you are leaving our site and we encourage you to read
the privacy policy of each site you visit that may collect information
or ask you to disclose personal information and/or health-related
personal information.
Framed Links. In some cases, this Web site will
“frame” another Web site within this site’s navigation. When this is
done, you will be notified that you are accessing another site within
this site, and that the framed site carries a different set of policies,
prior to accessing it.
We have agreements with the following organizations to frame
their content within our site:
- WellMed
- GeoAccess
- Veritas Medicine
- Medline from the National Library of Medicine
- Consumer Product Safety Commission
- Food and Drug Administration
- USDA Food and Safety Inspection Service
- National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
Veritas Medicine pays a fee to Healthvision, based on clicks generated
to their site from this site. The use of all other framed sites is not
based on any fees or reimbursements paid to Healthvision. In the case of
WellMed, Healthvision pays a fee for their content and/or services. For
all other framed sites, there is no financial relationship based on these
links.
Our Children's Policy
Children under the age of 13 are not allowed to register on our site
or to access areas that require registration. We have established a
mechanism in the registration process that does not allow children under
13 to complete the registration process. If we learn that we have
inadvertently collected information from an individual under the age of
13, that information will be immediately and permanently removed from our
servers.
Your Privacy Choices You
have the choice on this site to opt-in to information collected about you
in most circumstances, the exceptions being the instances when data are
used for site maintenance and so on. If you opt-in to data collection we
make every effort to give you detailed information on the program or
service you select. To opt-out of data collection, make any changes or
updates, or request that information be deleted, you have several choices.
Opt-out When you register with our
site, you are given the option of receiving e-mail with information that
we think you might find useful including promotions, announcements of new
services and products, and newsletters on particular health topics. You
may also participate in our personalized e-mail reminder system that
allows you to send an e-mail reminding you of certain health-related
activities such as a doctor's visit or to schedule tests. If you decide,
at any time, that you no longer wish to receive these e-mails you may
opt-out by deselecting the checkbox on your personal information page.
Change/Update Personal Information
You may change or update your personal information and/or
health-related personal information at any time using the following
options:
- Go to your personal information page and change the information
there.
- You can contact us in writing using the address in our contact us
link
Remove or Delete Personal
Information You may remove previously provided personal and/or
health-related personal information at any time using the following
options:
- You can contact us in writing using the address in our contact us
link
- To delete information from the WellMed database, please follow the
instructions outlined on this page under the header, "Our
Relationship with Third Parties."
Users should be aware that it is not always technically possible to
remove or delete the information you provide to us. We back-up our systems
to protect information from inadvertent loss, and that means a copy of
your personal information may exist in a non-erasable form that may be
difficult or impossible for us to locate. Nevertheless, upon receiving
your request we will try to remove or delete all personal information
and/or health-related personal information stored in the databases that we
use for research and daily business activities. We will not intentionally
disclose any personal information stored in a non-erasable format after
receiving your request for removal, except as required by law.
There are certain restrictions on your ability to correct, update or
remove the health information you enter into a personal health record. If
your doctor or other healthcare professional has access to your personal
health record, and they add information to that record, your personal
record could be considered an official medical record for legal purposes.
In this case, information cannot be deleted or removed, only updated or
annotated.
Relationship to Advertising/Sponsorship
Policy. The principles and practices outlined in our
advertising/sponsorship policy will be continued and enhanced by the
ongoing application of this privacy policy. For example, we will not
permit any sales or marketing of personally identifiable health
information to third party sponsors that would reveal to them personally
identifiable medical conditions. We will provide the names and addresses
of an individual user to sponsors or other third parties only when you
indicate that you desire to review additional information from the third
party and understand that your name and address information will be
transmitted.
Questions or Comments. We are
committed to continuously improving the quality of the health information
and tools found on this Web site. If you have any questions or comments
regarding this privacy policy or the health information found on this Web
site in general, please contact us at HealthInfo@healthvision.com or write
us at: Healthvision, Health Information Product Manager, 6330 Commerce
Drive, Irving, Texas 75063. |