We Respect Your Privacy!
Advanced Dental Associates understands the importance of protecting the privacy of basic personal information such as names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, account numbers, social security numbers and health information of our patients. We call this “Patient Information” and have adopted this Policy to guide how we use such Patient Information.
Purpose of This Policy
The purpose of this Policy is to balance our legitimate business interests in collecting and using Patient Information with the reasonable expectation of privacy, which may be held by those providing such Patient Information.
Patient Information
Advanced Dental Associates must collect and store Patient Information in order to provide our patients with requested care and billing related services. State dental regulations and governing entities require service providers to collect and retain some or all of such Patient Information.
Security
Security of Patient Information is very important to us and we are committed to protecting the information we collect. Our privacy protection practices help us maintain accurate, timely, complete and relevant information for our business purposes: Patient Information is collected only as deemed reasonably necessary to serve legitimate business purposes and comply with legal obligations. We use commercially reasonable efforts to make our collection of Patient Information consistent with all applicable laws and regulations. We exercise care in providing secure transmission and storage of information. We take commercially reasonable efforts to create and maintain firewalls, restrict access and secure socket layers, and implement other appropriate safeguards to ensure that Patient Information is used only as authorized by us and in compliance with this policy. Our communication system, software and database practices have been designed to aid us in supporting authenticity, integrity and confidentiality.
What We Do and Don’t Do with Your Patient Information:
- We do not sell, trade, rent or sell Patient Information to outside parties.
- We may use Patient Information internally to offer relevant goods and services to you.
- We will use Patient Information to contact you to inquire or survey about your Patient experience.
- We do use aggregate Patient Information, which is not personally identifiable, to understand more about the common traits and interests of our Patients.
- We do utilize one or more third-party service providers to send email or other communications to you on our behalf, including Patient satisfaction surveys. (These communication providers are prohibited from using your email address or other contact information for any purpose other than to send communications on our behalf).
Uses and Disclosures Based On Your Written Authorization:
Other uses and disclosures of your protected health information will be made only with your authorization, unless otherwise permitted or required by law as described below.
You may give us written authorization to use your protected health information or to disclose it to anyone for any purpose. If you give us an authorization, you may revoke it in writing at any time. Your revocation will not affect any use or disclosures permitted by your authorization while it was in effect.
Without your written authorization, we will not disclose your health care information except as described in this notice.
Others Involved in Your Health Care:
Unless you object, we may disclose to a member of your family, a relative, a close friend or any other person you identify, your protected health information that directly relates to that person’s involvement in your health care. If you are unable to agree or object to such a disclosure, we may disclose such information as necessary if we determine that it is in your best interest based on our professional judgment.
We may use or disclose protected health information to notify or assist in notifying a family member, personal representative or any other person that is responsible for your care of your location, general condition or death.
Payment
Your protected health information will be used, as needed, to obtain payment for your health care services. This may include certain activities that your health insurance plan may undertake before it approves or pays for the health care services we recommend for you, such as: making a determination of eligibility or coverage for insurance benefits, reviewing services provided to you for protected health necessity, and undertaking utilization review activities. For example, obtaining approval for a hospital stay may require that your relevant protected health information be disclosed to the health plan to obtain approval for the hospital admission.
Emails About Special Offers and Promotions and Opt-Out
We try to only send email communications will be useful to you and that you want to receive. When you provide us with your email address as part of the registration or appointment setting process, we will place you on our list of patients to receive informational and promotional emails. Each time you receive a promotional email, you will be provided the choice to “opt-out” of future emails by following the instructions provided at the bottom of the email.
Destruction of Information
Prior to the disposal of Patient Information we will destroy, erase or otherwise make unreadable your personal information including social security numbers, credit card numbers and other identifiable information.
Do We Use Cookies?
Yes. Cookies are small files that a site or its service provider transfers to your computer’s hard drive through your Web browser (if you allow), which enables the sites or service providers systems to recognize your browser and capture and remember certain information.
Cookie technology is commonly used throughout the online process to keep together information entered on multiple pages.
They also enable us to:
- Monitor popularity of various pages on our website, which helps us make our information more pertinent to your needs and easy for you to access; and,
- Provide functionality such as online appointments and other functionality that we believe would be of interest and value to you.
We do not use cookies to gather any personally identifiable information about you apart from what you voluntarily provide us in your dealings with us. Our cookies do not corrupt or damage your computer, programs or computer files. You may set your browser to block cookies.
Compliance with Law
We may be required to disclose Patient Information to law enforcement agencies, or during the discovery process in litigation, pursuant to a court order, or in compliance with any applicable law, regulation, rule or ordinance.
Privacy Policy Changes
We reserve the right to change our privacy practices and the terms of this notice at any time, provided that applicable law permits such changes. We reserve the right to make the changes in our privacy practices and the new terms of our notice effective for all protected health information that we maintain, including medical information we created or received before we made the changes. If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page, and/or update the Privacy Policy modification date below. This policy was last modified on January 1, 2014.
Contacting Us
If there are any questions regarding this privacy policy, please contact us using the information below.
Advanced Dental Associates
4600 Fairmont Pkwy, Suite 100
Pasadena, TX 77504
info@pasadenafamilydentist.com
(281) 991-1905