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PATIENT NETWORKS PUBLIC PORTAL PRIVACY POLICY
About us
Patient Networks is a primary care medical practice, located in downtown Toronto. We are a team of physicians who provide care to patients on a walk-in and appointment-booking basis.
At Patient Networks, we value our patients' personal health information. We know your personal health information is important to you and we are committed to treating your personal health information with a very high standard of care.
Purpose of this policy
The purpose of this policy is to inform patients who use the Patient Networks Public Portal on www.patientnetworks.ca about the information that is collected, used and stored on the www.patientnetworks.ca Public Portal.
Purpose of the Public Portal
The purpose of the www.patientnetworks.ca Public Portal is two-fold:
- The Public Portal provides visitors to our medical clinic with important information about our services, location, hours of operation, public bulletins, and clinic wait times; and,
- The Public Portal also allows our patients to log-in remotely and book, view, cancel, or modify their own appointment times with physicians at Patient Networks.
Collection of Personal Health Information
The collection, use, and storage of personal information via the Public Portal of patientnetworks.ca will vary, depending on the function for which you are using the site. More specifically:
- Use of the Public Portal on patientnetworks.ca for the purposes of viewing information about Patient Networks, its hours of operation, publicly posted information and notices, as well as the patient wait times does not require users to provide personal health information.
- Use of the Appointment Scheduler function on the Public Portal of patientnetworks.ca does require the collection of a user's personal health information. The personal health information provided by patients who use the Appointment Scheduler on the Public Portal of patientnetworks.ca is used in order to verify the identity and authenticity of the user attempting to use the Appointment Scheduler to book, modify or cancel appointments on behalf of the identified patient-user.
When a patient uses the Appointment Booking function of the Public Portal, personal health information including the patient's name, date of birth, health card number, and appointment bookings will be collected, used and stored on patientnetworks.ca.
Patients using the Appointment Booking function of the Public Portal of patientnetwork.ca use their health card number as a personal/unique identifier and have the option of creating their own unique and confidential password, which is encrypted in order to ensure the security and integrity of the information provided.
While Patient Networks may reset patient-users' passwords from time to time, Patient Networks will not view a patient-user's unique password.
Storage of Personal Health Information
Personal health information that is disclosed by patient-users of the Public Portal of www.patientnetworks.ca is stored on a dedicated Patient Networks server. The use of a dedicated server means that Patient Networks does not co-host servers or "share" servers with other medical practices, businesses, or organizations. Rather, the information collected on the Public Portal of patientnetworks.ca is stored on an individual secure server.
Patient-users' personal health information collected via the Public Portal of patientnetwork.ca, is encrypted with secured-socket layer ("SSL") encryption. SSL encryption allows for data confidentiality and the preservation of the integrity of our patient-users' personal health information.
Personal health information collected via the Public Portal of patientnetworks.ca will not be shared or disclosed with other third-party organizations; however, we reserve the right to disclose users' personal health and other information as required by law or requested by related authorities in order to comply with our legal and licensing duties, as prescribed by municipal, provincial, federal laws, regulations, and licensing bodies.
Accessing Your Information
If you would like to access, or request a correction of, your personal health information, please visit us in person or reach out to us at contact@patientnetworks.ca. With your express and documented consent, we can print hard-copies of your health information for you or we can provide digital copies of your records to you.
Complaints regarding Privacy Matters
We respect your privacy and we maintain your personal health information in accordance with the College of Physician of Ontario and with the standards set out the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario. As always, complaints about privacy concerns can be made to the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario.
Modifications will be made to this policy from time to time and posted online at www.patientnetworks.ca.