IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE FEDERAL REGULATIONS OF HIPAA'S PRIVACY RULE, THIS NOTICE DESCRIBES HOW MEDICAL INFORMATION ABOUT YOU MAY BE USED AND DISCLOSED AND HOW YOU CAN OBTAIN ACCESS TO IT.
We respect our legal obligation to keep health information that might identify you private. We are obligated by law to provide you with notice of our privacy practices. This notice describes how we protect your health information and what rights you have regarding it.
TREATMENT,PAYMENT, AND HEALTH CARE OPERATIONS
The most common reason why we use or disclose your health information is the treatment, payment or health care operations. Examples of how we use or disclose information for treatment purposes are: setting up an appointment for you; testing or examining your eyes; prescribing glasses, contact lenses, or eye medications and faxing/emailing them to be filled; showing you low vision aids; referring you to another doctor or clinic for eye care or low vision aids or services; or getting copies of your health information from another professional that you may have seen before us. Examples of how we use or disclose your health information for payment purposes are: asking you about your health or vision care plans, or other resources of payment; preparing or sending bills or claims; and collecting unpaid amounts (either ourselves or through a collection agency or attorney.) "Health care operations" mean those administrative and managerial functions that we have to do in order to run our office. Examples of how we use or disclose your health information for health care operations are: financial or billing audits; internal quality assurance; personnel decisions; participation in managed care plans; defense of legal matters; business planning; and outside storage of our records.
APPOINTMENT REMINDERS
We may call, email or write to remind you of scheduled appointments, or that it is time to make a routine appointment. We may also email, call, or write to notify you of other treatments or services available at our office that might help you. Unless you tell us otherwise, we will call, email, or mail you an appointment reminder.
CHANGING OUR NOTICE OF PRIVACY PRACTICES
Please take the time to review our policy for handling your customer information. By visiting the our website, you are accepting the practices described in this Privacy Policy. Our Privacy Policy may change from time to time, so please revisit this page and review the Policy regularly. If you have any questions regarding our Privacy Policy, please contact us. We appreciate your comments and suggestions.
We may share the information we collect with third parties, as detailed below. We may use the information to improve the content of our website, to make our future marketing efforts more efficient, to notify you about current products, special offers, services and events, and for other purposes. The information we collect may be combined with other personally identifiable information available from our records and other sources, such as purchase history and demographic information.
Your trust and privacy are very important to us! Therefore, we ask only for the information we need to process your requests:
E-Mail Address:
We will use the e-mail address you provide on your order to send you an order receipt and to communicate about your order. We may also use it to contact you about future website or product updates. Please be assured that the e-mail address you provide to us is for internal use only. If you decide you would like to be removed from this service, you may follow the instructions on the messages you are sent.
Questions and Comments:
We want to hear from you -- your comments, suggestions, questions. Every message is read and a response sent as quickly as possible if requested. The information you send us is used to respond to your questions and comments only.
Cookies:
We may also use "cookies" or other means to passively collect information about your use of our website. A cookie is a piece of data stored on your computer that lets your web browser talk with our web server. It saves you from retyping your user name and password every time you use our secure checkout. If you are shopping on our site and are having difficulty completing your order, please check the privacy settings in your browser. If you have your settings set to not accept cookies, you will not be able to purchase from our site.
Children:
Our website is intended only for those aged 13 and older. If you are under 13, you may not register or submit personally identifiable information on, to or through the site. We do not collect personally identifiable information from any person we know to be under 13.
Opting Out:
If you do not wish to receive mailed or emailed promotional material, or if you do not wish your name to be shared with third parties for marketing purposes, please contact us.
Security:
We take care to protect the security of your personal information, including your credit card information, from loss, misuse, unauthorized access or disclosure. However, transmissions to the website may be intercepted and read by others and we cannot be responsible for any such interception.
We use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology to protect the security of your personal on-line order information. To check the security of your connection to our website, look in the lower right-hand corner of your browser window after entering our checkout section. If you see an unbroken key or a closed lock (depending on your browser), then SSL is active. On newer versions of some browsing software it may be located in the upper address bar. You can also double-check you are in a secure shopping environment by looking at the URL line of your browser. When you are using a secure server, the first characters of the site address will change from "http" to "https." If you cannot access the secure server for any reason, please call and place your order by phone.