Privacy Policy

Thank you for visiting our website and for reviewing our Website Privacy Policy as follows: – We do not collect Personally Identifiable Information (PII) about you unless you choose to provide that information to us. – If you are a patient of the practice and you choose to provide PII, any PII you provide is protected by security controls consistent with North County Orthopedic Medical Group Notice of Privacy Practices (NPP). – Non-PII information related to your visit to our website may be automatically collected and temporarily stored. For more information on your health information privacy and security rights visit the NPP page.

Information Collected and Stored Automatically

When you browse through our website, we gather and temporarily store technical information about your visit. This information does not identify who you are. The information we collect includes:

• The name of the domain you use to access the Internet (for example, aol.com, if you are using an American Online account, or stanford.edu, if you are connecting from Stanford University’s domain).
• The date and time of your visit
• The pages you visited
• The address of the website you came from when you came to visit

We use this information to improve our website and provide a better user experience for our visitors. We use various tools such as Google Analytics and other software to collect and aggregate this information. This information is available only to web managers and other designated staff who require this information to perform their duties. It is retained only for as long as needed for proper analysis.

Web Measurement and Cookies

We use web measurement and customization technologies, such as ‘cookies’, to help our website function better for visitors and to better understand how visitors use our website. A ‘cookie’ is a small text file automatically placed on your computer. We use two types of cookies on our websites:

• We use session cookies to gather data for technical purposes, such as enabling better navigation through our website and generating aggregated statistics about how the website is used. Session cookies are temporary text files that expire when you leave our website. When cookies expire, they are automatically deleted from your computer. We do not use session cookies to collect PII, and we do not share data collected from session cookies.
• We use multi-session cookies, a.k.a. persistent cookies, to customize our website for frequent visitors and to test variations of website design and content. Multi-session cookies are cookies that are stored over more than a single session on your computer. We do not use multi-session cookies to collect PII, and we do not share data collected from multi-session cookies. You may take actions to block cookies. Blocking these cookies from your computer will not affect your access to the content and tools on our website.

Personal Information Voluntarily Submitted

If you choose to provide our practice with personal information — for example by completing a ‘Contact Us’ form, leaving a comment, or completing a survey — we may use that information to respond to your message and/or help us get you the information or services you asked for. Submitting personal information (name, address, telephone number, email address, etc.) is voluntary and is not required to access most areas of our website. We will retain the information only for as long as necessary to respond to your question or to fulfill the stated purpose of the communication.

Personal Information Submitted Through Our Patient Portal

Our website may provide access to a Patient Portal that will link you to an Electronic Healthcare Record (EHR) system which operates outside of the network of our website. If you choose to access our EHR system, you will be required to establish an account name, password and provide other information for security purposes. Our Patient Portal will provide further information on the privacy information of our EHR system.

Visiting Our Website on Third-Party Websites

We may maintain accounts on third-party websites, such as social media sites, as tools to better interact with our visitors. Your activity on those third-party websites is governed by the security and privacy policies of those sites. Users of third-party websites are often sharing information with the general public, user community, and/or the third-party operating the website and information may be used in a variety of ways. You should review the privacy policies of third-party websites before using them and ensure that you understand how your information may be used. You should also adjust privacy settings on your account on any third-party website to match your preferences.

Common third-party websites in use include:

• YouTube
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Google
• Google Places

Information Collected and Used from Third-Party Websites

If you have an account with a third-party website, and choose to follow, like, friend, or comment, certain PII associated with your account may be made available based on the privacy policies of the third-party website and your privacy settings within that third-party website.

Disclosure

The practice does not disclose, give, sell, or transfer any personal information about our visitors unless required for law enforcement.