Privacy Policy

Healthcare Communities is committed to protecting your privacy and developing technology that gives you the most powerful and safe online experience. This Statement of Privacy applies to the Healthcare Communities Web site and governs data collection and usage. By using the Healthcare Communities website, you consent to the data practices described in this statement.

Collection of your Personal Information

Healthcare Communities collects personally identifiable information, such as your e-mail address, name, home or work address, or telephone number. Healthcare Communities also collects anonymous demographic information, which is not unique to you, such as your ZIP code, age, gender, preferences, interests, and favorites.

There is also information about your computer hardware and software that is automatically collected by Healthcare Communities. This information can include: your IP address, browser type, domain names, access times, and referring Web site addresses. This information is used by Healthcare Communities for the operation of the service, to maintain quality of the service, and to provide general statistics regarding use of the Healthcare Communities Web site.

Please keep in mind that if you directly disclose personally identifiable information or personally sensitive data through Healthcare Communities public message boards, this information may be collected and used by others. Note: Healthcare Communities does not read any of your private online communications.

Healthcare Communities encourages you to review the privacy statements of Web sites you choose to link to from Healthcare Communities so that you can understand how those Web sites collect, use, and share your information. Healthcare Communities is not responsible for the privacy statements or other content on Web sites outside of the Healthcare Communities and Healthcare Communities family of Web sites.

Use of your Personal Information

Healthcare Communities collects and uses your personal information to operate the Healthcare Communities Web site and deliver the services you have requested. Healthcare Communities also uses your personally identifiable information to inform you of other products or services available from Healthcare Communities and its affiliates. Healthcare Communities may also contact you via surveys to conduct research about your opinion of current services or of potential new services that may be offered.

Healthcare Communities does not sell, rent, or lease its customer lists to third parties. Healthcare Communities may, from time to time, contact you on behalf of external business partners about a particular offering that may be of interest to you. In those cases, your unique personally identifiable information (e-mail, name, address, telephone number) is not transferred to the third party. In addition, Healthcare Communities may share data with trusted partners to help us perform statistical analysis, send you email or postal mail, provide customer support, or arrange for deliveries. All such third parties are prohibited from using your personal information except to provide these services to Healthcare Communities, and they are required to maintain the confidentiality of your information. Healthcare Communities does not use or disclose sensitive personal information, such as race, religion, or political affiliations, without your explicit consent.

Healthcare Communities keeps track of the Web sites and pages our customers visit within Healthcare Communities, in order to determine what Healthcare Communities services are the most popular. These data are used to deliver customized content and advertising within Healthcare Communities to customers whose behavior indicates that they are interested in a particular subject area.

Healthcare Communities Web sites will disclose your personal information, without notice, only if required to do so by law or in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to: (a) conform to the edicts of the law or comply with legal process served on Healthcare Communities or the site, (b) protect and defend the rights or property of Healthcare Communities, and (c) act under exigent circumstances to protect the personal safety of users of Healthcare Communities, or the public.

Use of Cookies

The Healthcare Communities Web site use “cookies” to help you personalize your online experience. A cookie is a text file that is placed on your hard disk by a Web page server. Cookies cannot be used to run programs or deliver viruses to your computer. Cookies are uniquely assigned to you and can only be read by a web server in the domain that issued the cookie to you.

One of the primary purposes of cookies is to provide a convenience feature to save you time. The purpose of a cookie is to tell the Web server that you have returned to a specific page. For example, if you personalize Healthcare Communities pages, or register with Healthcare Communities site or services, a cookie helps Healthcare Communities to recall your specific information on subsequent visits. This simplifies the process of recording your personal information, such as billing addresses, shipping addresses, and so on. When you return to the same Healthcare Communities Web site, the information you previously provided can be retrieved, so you can easily use the Healthcare Communities features that you customized.

You have the ability to accept or decline cookies. Most Web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. If you choose to decline cookies, you may not be able to fully experience the interactive features of the Healthcare Communities services or Web sites you visit.

Security of your Personal Information

1) Encryption of Data in Transit

Data are an irreplaceable asset and encryption serves as the last and strongest line of defense in a multi-layered data security strategy. CSI collaboration portals are hosted in a highly secure cloud environment supported by Microsoft and exceeds all federal security requirements and provides the highest level of security currently available in the industry.

When your data are in transit, they are encrypted as they move between you and the data center, and between the server and the data center, which uses 2048-bit keys.

2) Encryption of Data at Rest

As noted above, the Microsoft Cloud platform hosting CSI collaboration portals uses some of the strongest, most secure encryption protocols in the industry to provide a barrier against unauthorized access to your data.

When data are at rest, two types of encryption are used: disk encryption and file encryption.

At the disk encryption level a BitLocker is used to secure data and on the file encryption level every file is secured with its own key that uses Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) with 256-bit keys, which is a Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2 compliant.

Changes to this Statement

Healthcare Communities will occasionally update this Statement of Privacy to reflect company and customer feedback. Healthcare Communities encourages you to periodically review this Statement to be informed of how Healthcare Communities is protecting your information.

Contact Information

Healthcare Communities welcomes your comments regarding this Statement of Privacy. If you believe that Healthcare Communities has not adhered to this Statement, please contact Healthcare Communities at webmaster@healthcarecommunities.org. We will use commercially reasonable efforts to promptly determine and remedy the problem.