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Personal Information
Privacy Policy
The privacy of your personal information is important to us. Here's what we do to help.
Learn moreWHAT IS PERSONAL INFORMATION?
Personal information is the information about an identifiable individual. Personal information includes information that relates to their personal characteristics (e.g. gender, age, income, home address, phone number, ethnic background, family status) health (e.g., health history, health conditions, health services received by them), or their activities and views (e.g. religion, political views, opinion).
Personal information is to be contrasted with business information (e.g., an individual’s business address and telephone number), which is not protected by privacy legislation. Personal Information also includes information that does not directly identify you but when combined with other information identifies (or can be used to identify) you.
WHY WE COLLECT PERSONAL INFORMATION: PRIMARY PURPOSES
Like all healthcare practitioners, we collect, use and disclose personal information to serve our clients. For our clients, the primary purpose of collecting personal information is to provide physiotherapy, massage therapy or chiropractor treatment. For example, we collect information about a clients health history, including their family history of physical condition and function, social situation in order to help assess what their health needs are, to advise them of their options and then provide the health care they chose to have. A secondary primary purpose is to obtain a baseline of health and social information so that in providing ongoing health services, we can identify changes that are occurring over time. The cost of some goods/services provided by the organization to clients is paid for by third parties (e.g. WSIB, private insurance, MVA insurance). These third-parties often have your consent or legislation authority to collect and disclose certain information in order to demonstrate client entitlement to this funding.
HOW WE COLLECT DATA
Vaughan Physiotherapy Clinic uses a service provided by Google called Google Analytics, Tag manager and other similar technologies provided by other companies. These services allows us to analyze how people find us on the internet, as well as how our websites are used, so that we can better understand the needs of users and improve the Services accordingly.
DO YOU HAVE A CONCERN?
For more general inquiries, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada oversees the administration of the privacy legislation in the private sector. The Commissioner also acts as a kind of ombudsman for privacy disputes. The Privacy Commissioner can be reached at:112 KENT STREET | OTTAWA, ONTARIO | K1A 1H3PHONE (613) 995-8210 | TOLL-FREE 1-800-282-1376 | FAX (613) 947-6850 |TTY (613) 992-9190 www.privcom.gc.ca
HOW WE PROTECT PERSONAL INFORMATION
We understand the importance of protecting personal information. For that reason, we have taken the following steps:
- Paper information is either under supervision or secured in a locked or restricted area.
- Electronic hardware is either under supervision or secured in a locked or restricted area. In addition, passwords are used on computers.
- Paper information is transmitted through sealed, addressed envelopes or boxed by reputable companies.
- Electronic information is transmitted either through a direct line or as encrypted information.
- Clinic staff is trained to collect, use and disclose personal information only as necessary to fulfill their duties in accordance with our privacy policy.
- External consultants and agencies with access to personal information must enter into privacy agreements with us.
RETENTION AND DESTRUCTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION
We need to retain personal information for some time to ensure that we can answer any questions you might have about the services provided and for our accountability to external regulatory bodies. However, we do not retain information for unnecessarily long in order to protect the patients’ privacy. We keep patient files for ten years. We destroy paper files containing personal information by shredding. We destroy electronic information by deleting it and, when the hardware is discarded, we ensure it is physically destroyed.
