Privacy, Legal and Social Media Policies

What You Should Expect from Us

We will strive to maintain your privacy, confidentiality and security at all times

• We will not use your information 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 goal to make you aware when you leave our site for another by having the other site open in a new window

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.

About the Information We Collect

We understand that the personal information and health-related personal information 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 "personal information" 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 "health-related personal information". 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 some areas of 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.

Where this Information is Collected

We may collect information about you at several places throughout the site. You will be informed on how this information is collected at that time. You will also have the ability to opt-in to information collection when you are using the site or use a service. Most information is collected in the following instances: 

Registration

We offer specialized registration for certain programs, events and classes in addition to registration for health care services that may request specific information.

We may use your registration information to send you an e-mail confirming your registration, to respond to questions from you or to notify you if there is a problem with any services that you requested. We also may, from time to time, send e-mails with your permission on special promotions or newsletters we think may be of interest to you.

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 website 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 may allow 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.

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 expressed 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 also may share aggregate statistical information on our users, traffic patterns and site usage with our business partners. 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

We have business relationships with third-party vendors that deliver services and content. We ask that all business partners disclose their confidentiality practices and procedures and agree to abide by our privacy policy. We make diligent efforts to ensure that third-party vendors are above board; however, we are separate organizations and as such we are not privy to the details of their operations and not responsible for their actions. We work with several types of third-party vendors, including those that provide products and services that we integrate to our 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.

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. 

External Links – We feature external links to other websites that we believe you might find useful; however, we do not endorse these sites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of these external sites.

Our Children's Policy – Our site may feature information and services of interest to children 13 and under. Contact information, such as name, e-mail address and demographic information including their age and ethnicity, may be requested. We do not disclose personal or health-related personal information about our 13 or under users. We may, however, use information to create aggregate data that may be shared with third parties. To obtain more information on a child's use of this site, parents or guardians can contact us in writing using the address on our home page links.

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.

Remove or Delete Personal Information

You may remove previously provided personal and/or health-related personal information at any time. Contact us in writing using the address in our Contact Us links. 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 health care 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.

Social Media Policy

Terms of Use:

We welcome comments on MDstewardship social media avenues. We encourage you to join in conversations with open, honest and respectful comments using your real name and e-mail address. All comments will be moderated. 

MDstewardship reserves the right to remove comments/material that:

• Contain abusive language or profanity

• Infringes on the rights of others, is unlawful, hateful, threatening or slanderous (as determined by MDstewardship)

• Contain solicitations of businesses or advertisements

• Are spam, chain letters or pyramid schemes

• Contain private health information that is not your own

By posting comments or other material, you give MDstewardship the permanent right to reproduce, publish, display and to use your comments for other purposes in any media form.

MDstewardship will disclose user information to third parties, as required by law, or in circumstances where we believe the comments indicate a situation that could be illegal, harmful or dangerous to others.