PatientSERV Privacy Policy
Use
The PatientSERV portal is a tool used by participating physicians to automate the management and collection of fees charged to patients for uninsured health care services. PatientSERV is committed to protecting and safeguarding the privacy and security of personal information including personal health information. Services delivered by PatientSERV shall comply with all applicable privacy laws including, but not limited to, the Ontario Personal Health Information Act, 2004. We will collect, use, transmit and disclose all personal information including personal health information accessed through the PatientSERV portal only for the purpose of managing the collection of fees charged to users by or on behalf of our participating physician clients for uninsured health care services or as may be otherwise required by law. We collect only the information necessary to serve this purpose.
Information collected by PatientSERV during the registration process or at any time is not disclosed, sold, transmitted or distributed to any third party other than to the user’s physician’s office and to Chase Paymentech, a recognized credit card processing company used for billing purposes. Chase Paymentech does not retain, share, store or use personally identifiable information for any other purposes.
In order to register for the PatientSERV services, a user must first complete a short registration form. During this process a user is required to provide personal details such as your full name, phone number, email, credit card, and address details. We also request that you provide your personal provincial health number at the time of initial registration. This number is used solely to ensure that a user’s identification matches the physician’s records. At no time does PatientSERV have any access whatsoever to your personal medical records or any other personal information except as required to provide the billing services described above.
Without limiting any of the above statements, PatientSERV also commits to complying with all information management practices and patient protocols established by the client physician from time to time.
By accessing this portal and completing the initial registration process a user consents to the collection, use and disclosure of his or her personal information including personal health information for the sole purpose of facilitating the management, collection and payment of fees charged by the user’s physician for uninsured health care services.
Cookies
A cookie is a small text file that is stored on a user’s computer for record-keeping purposes. We use cookies on this portal. We do not link the information we store in cookies to any personally identifiable information you submit while using this portal.
We use both session ID cookies and persistent cookies. We use session cookies to make it easier for you to navigate our portal. A session ID cookie expires when you close your browser. A persistent cookie remains on your hard drive for an extended period of time. You can remove persistent cookies by following directions provided in your Internet browser’s “help” file.
Security
PatientSERV takes precautions to protect a user’s personal information. When you submit sensitive information via the portal, your information is protected both online and off-line. Our employees are trained and kept up-to-date on our existing security and privacy practices. As well, at any time new policies are added, our employees are notified and/or reminded about the importance we place on privacy, and what they can do to ensure our user’s information is protected. The servers on which we store personally identifiable information are kept in a secure location. Our servers meet or exceed industry standard firewall protection and are monitored 24 hours a day. All users’ account information is protected by a password authentication process. PatientSERV will take all reasonable steps to protect a user’s personal information from unauthorized access, loss, disclosure, theft or transmittal. Credit card information is held in the portal only until it has been received and processed by Chase Paymentech. If you have any questions about the security of your personal information, you can send an email to info@patientserv.ca. PatientSERV uses SSL Encryption to protect the sensitive information our users submit to our portal, such as credit card numbers.
Business Transitions
In the event that PatientSERV goes through a business transition, such as a merger, acquisition by another company, or sale of all or a portion of its assets, your personally identifiable information will likely be among the assets transferred. In such case, you would be notified in advance via email and prominent notice on the portal of any such change in ownership or control of your personal information.
Changes to this Policy
If we decide to change our Privacy Policy, we will notify users so that you are always aware of what our policy is at any moment in time. If at any time we decide to use personally identifiable information in any manner different from that stated at the time it was collected, we will notify users by email. Users will have a choice as to whether or not we use their information in this different manner.