At Naturally Balanced, the privacy of your personal information is important to us. We are committed to collecting, using and disclosing personal information in a responsible manner and only to the extent necessary. We will not disclose personal information without consent or reasonable and lawful notice except when required or permitted by law. When providing services to you, we restrict access to any personal information we hold as much as is reasonably possible, and always on a need-to-know basis.
HOW WE USE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION
Like all health care providers, we collect, use, and disclose personal information in order to provide our patients with healthcare services and facilitate payment for these services.
Clinical reports may be forwarded to other parties including other health practitioners, insurers and assessment agencies with your expressed consent.
Any personal information requested by a third party will require a signed health information release form by you, the patient, and only information relating to the specified condition/injury will be released.
PERSONAL INFORMATION COLLECTED
Contact and personal information: name, phone numbers, e-mail address (this is optional and is used for the purpose of appointment reminders and sending receipts if requested by you to do so), mailing address, emergency contact person, date of birth, gender, Alberta Healthcare number, marital status, and occupation.
Health information: health history, treatment provided, names of other healthcare providers, family medical history, your subjective complaints, objective findings, diagnoses, and plan of management.
Financial information: your insurance benefit coverage information, and other information to facilitate payment for services provided.
SECONDARY USE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION
Like most health care providers, we also collect, use and disclose information for the secondary purpose of informing and promoting to patients our services and benefits. This may occur from time-to-time and involve the use of telephone, mail or electronic media. Providing us with your email address is optional, and you have the option to opt out of any email communication that you do not wish to receive. We do not use outside parties for marketing and we do not disclose, sell or share personal information about our patients.
PROTECTING PERSONAL INFORMATION
We understand the importance of protecting personal information. For that reason, we have taken the following steps to ensure the confidentiality and security of your information:
Paper information is kept under supervision during office hours and, outside of office hours, is kept in a locked filing cabinet.
Paper information is transmitted through sealed, addressed envelopes or boxes by reputable companies. Any faxed paper information includes our fax cover with a confidentiality clause included.
Staff are trained to collect, use and disclose personal information only as necessary to fulfill their duties and in accordance with our privacy policy.
Ensuring that any sharing of your personal information is only for the purposes stated and agreed to in a signed consent form or otherwise permitted by law.
We review our privacy policy annually to ensure it provides adequate protection for your personal information.
Electronic hardware is under supervision during office hours and a privacy screen is used to protect our monitor from public viewing.
Electronic patient chart notes, confidential personal information such as your name, contact information, and billing information is accessible through our billing software, Jane. Jane is password protected, with individualized logins for each staff member, and login information is tracked. Jane uses industry standard security controls such as encryption and an SSL (Secured Sockets Layers) certificate to ensure information is transmitted over a secured connection between the browser and web server. They use state-of-the-art date centers with appropriate security and compliance certifications such as SOC 2 and EU-US Privacy Shield that are HIPAA compliant. For more information see https://jane.app/legal/privacy-policy.
On site at Naturally Balanced, we store electronic records, such as third party billing confirmations, on secured hardware, with updated firewall and malware protection. Our computers are password protected, with a separate user account for all routine and system related work. No passwords are stored on the system.
A separate secured and non-broadcasting wireless network is used to access any confidential patient information, such as when accessing Netcare.
We conduct telephone discussions with sensitivity to ensure that your personal information is not inadvertently disclosed.
RETENTION AND DESTRUCTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION
We are required by legislation to keep records containing personal information for 10 years from the last date of service. In the case of a minor, personal information is kept for 10 years past the minor’s eighteenth birthday. After that time, we shred paper records.
Naturally Balanced will also retain Usage Data for internal analysis purposes. Usage Data is generally retained for a shorter period of time, except when this data is used to strengthen the security or to improve the functionality of our website, or we are legally obligated to retain this data for longer time periods.
REQUESTS TO VIEW OR CORRECT YOUR INFORMATION
With only a few exceptions, you have the right to see what personal information we’ve collected on you. Often, you just need to ask in order for us to disclose your personal information to you. If we do not know who you are, we will need to confirm your identity before providing you with this information. Requested copies of your record will be provided in a reasonable period. If there is a charge for the cost of producing a copy, we will advise you of the cost in advance.
If there is a problem we may ask you to put your request in writing. If we cannot give you access, we will let you know promptly and give you the reason as to why.
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 to any professional opinions we may have formed. 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.
SHARING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION
Contact information – may be disclosed to third-party health benefit providers/insurers when reimbursement claims for all or part of the treatment cost have been submitted.
Health information – may be disclosed to:
- Third-party health benefit providers and insurance companies when we have been asked to submit a claim on your behalf.
- To WCB or your employer if you made a WCB claim.
- Other healthcare professionals also providing you with treatment.
- Your lawyer, if you were injured in an accident.
Financial information – may be disclosed to your insurer.
Research teams in an anonymous form to facilitate outcome research.
Note: Personal information can also be disclosed without your consent if we are required to do so by law.
New risks to the confidentiality, integrity and availability of health information may arise over time as technology and business processes evolve. As such, our privacy officer conducts annual reviews to our risk assessments to assess the effectiveness of our privacy policy.
If you have a concern about your personal information, please feel free to ask the practitioner treating you or another staff member. If your question/concern is not resolved, please address it in writing to our privacy officer: Dr. Melissa Reinke
USAGE DATA
Usage Data is collected automatically when using our website www.naturallybalancedtherapy.ca.
Usage Data may include information such as Your Device's Internet Protocol address (e.g. IP address), browser type, browser version, the pages of our Service that you visit, the time and date of your visit, the time spent on those pages, unique device identifiers and other diagnostic data.
When You access our website by or through a mobile device, we may collect certain information automatically, including, but not limited to, the type of mobile device you use, your mobile device unique ID, the IP address of your mobile device, your mobile operating system, the type of mobile Internet browser you use, unique device identifiers and other diagnostic data.
We may also collect information that your browser sends whenever you visit our website or when you access the website by or through a mobile device.
TRACKING TECHNOLOGIES AND COOKIES
We use Cookies and similar tracking technologies to track the activity on our website and store certain information. Tracking technologies used are beacons, tags, and scripts to collect and track information and to improve and analyze our website. The technologies we use may include:
- Cookies or Browser Cookies. A cookie is a small file placed on your Device. You can instruct your browser to refuse all Cookies or to indicate when a Cookie is being sent. However, if you do not accept Cookies, you may not be able to use some parts of our website. Unless you have adjusted Your browser setting so that it will refuse Cookies, our Service may use Cookies.
- Web Beacons. Certain sections of our website may contain small electronic files known as web beacons (also referred to as clear gifs, pixel tags, and single-pixel gifs) that permit the Company, for example, to count users who have visited those pages or opened an email and for other related website statistics (for example, recording the popularity of a certain section and verifying system and server integrity).
Cookies can be "Persistent" or "Session" Cookies. Persistent Cookies remain on your personal computer or mobile device when you go offline, while Session Cookies are deleted as soon as you close your web browser.
We use both Session and Persistent Cookies for the purposes set out below:
- Necessary / Essential Cookies (Session Cookies): These Cookies are essential to provide you with services available through the website and to enable you to use some of its features. They help to authenticate users and prevent fraudulent use of user accounts. Without these Cookies, the services that you have asked for cannot be provided, and we only use these Cookies to provide you with those services.
- Cookies Policy / Notice Acceptance Cookies (Persistent Cookies): These Cookies identify if users have accepted the use of cookies on the Website.
- Tracking and Performance Cookies (Persistent Cookies- Administered by: Third-Parties): These Cookies are used to track information about traffic to the Website and how users use the Website. The information gathered via these Cookies may directly or indirectly identify you as an individual visitor. This is because the information collected is typically linked to a pseudonymous identifier associated with the device you use to access the Website. We may also use these Cookies to test new pages, features or new functionality of the Website to see how our users react to them.
For more information about the cookies we use and your choices regarding cookies, please visit our Cookies Policy or the Cookies section of our Privacy Policy.
ANALYTICS
We use Google Analytics as a third-party Service providers to monitor and analyze the use of our website.
Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. Google uses the data collected to track and monitor the use of our Service. This data is shared with other Google services. Google may use the collected data to contextualize and personalize the ads of its own advertising network.
You can opt-out of having made your activity on the Service available to Google Analytics by installing the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on. The add-on prevents the Google Analytics JavaScript (ga.js, analytics.js and dc.js) from sharing information with Google Analytics about visits activity.
For more information on the privacy practices of Google, please visit the Google Privacy & Terms web page:
www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/
EMAIL MARKETING We may use Your Personal Data to contact you with newsletters, marketing or promotional materials and other information that may be of interest to you. You may opt-out of receiving any, or all, of these communications from us by following the unsubscribe link or instructions provided in any email we send or by contacting us.