Privacy Policy
Last Update: January, 2008
By accepting Drisonline's Terms of Use, you consent to the use and disclosure of
some personally identifiable information provided to us as part of a treatment plan,
for billing purposes, or as otherwise outlined below in this Privacy Policy
Information Collection
Because Drisonline provides a service for web-based communication between you and
your healthcare provider (your doctor or other healthcare professional), we ask
you for the sort of personal information your doctor or doctor’s office has told
us they need to treat you, respond to your requests, or streamline administration
in their office.
We will not sell, share or rent information collected by Drisonline to others in
any way other than as disclosed in this Privacy Policy. Drisonline collects information
from you as needed for specific purposes. Most sensitive information is collected
only by your doctor’s office.
Types of Information
Subscriber Contact Information.
Information Request
If you request more information about Drisonline prior to registering, you are asked
for this contact information: your name and e-mail address. At your option, you
can give additional contact information (for example, your health plan or physician’s
name). This information will be used by Drisonline to contact you about our services.
Registration
Certain contact information is required in order to register with Drisonline, including
your name, e-mail address, home address, and birth date, as well as the name, address
and phone number of your health insurer. The Drisonline online health services are
only accessible after you confirm your personal contact information and your insurance
information, so that information never goes astray because of out-of-date contact
info. You choose your Drisonline user name and password when you register with Drisonline.com.
This becomes your account log-in. Once you are registered, your physician will confirm
that you are a registered patient, confirm your health plan, and issue you a unique
medical records number. This number is required to access the online health services
of Drisonline, so your information is password-protected at two discrete levels.
Subscriber Medical Information.
The purpose of Drisonline is to provide you and your physician (and the doctor’s
staff and people you authorize) with tools to communicate effectively and efficiently.
Of necessity, medical issues and/or general health matters will be the focus of
these communications. Always bear in mind that you control how much and what kind
of information you choose to disclose, even to a healthcare provider. Being direct
and honest will serve you in getting swift, quality care, but it is not necessary
to divulge information you may feel uncomfortable bringing up, unless your physician
or staff specifically requests this information. Even then, disclosures should be
limited to what is required, without embellishment. Always remember that your disclosures
become part of your digital medical records and can be reviewed in the future if
any question arises about a medical transaction
Drisonline offers various messaging channels related to specific services, and communications
take place through different technological media. In most cases, you as the patient
will initiate a transaction by requesting a specific service online. In some cases,
your doctor will initiate contact with you, for example, to issue reminders about
an appointment or test, or to give you feedback about your treatment plan. Information
you disclose may be used to update your Personal Health Record and if relevant,
other features of your digital medical records. Your provision of any information
is voluntary. Your Personal Health Record must be accessible to your doctor, doctors
you are referred to, and their authorized staff. This is part of the Terms and Conditions
of the operation of Drisonline.com to which you have agreed in registering with
this service.
E-mails, video emails and text messages are recorded and archived as part of the
services of Drisonline. Drisonline will not edit the content of any of these communications,
except in a single situation: If as part of a video transmission sent to your healthcare
provider you attempt any physical exposure or give voice to any vocal commentary
that may be deemed offensive or obscene, these portions (and only these portions)
of your communication will be excised, using the standard bleeps and screen wipes.
Similarly, if email or text messages contain offensive or objectionable material,
you will be warned and the material expunged from your message.
Provider Health Information.
Your physician’s office may provide information about you drawn from their paper
records or patient files, to update and supplement your Personal Health Record or
other information fields on the Drisonline.com site. Some physicians may scan your
entire paper chart and upload it to their website to be stored as EMR/HER for safekeeping
and accuracy. This process will involve sharing information about you via integration
of prior medical records from storage, or from billing systems at your doctor’s
office. Your consent to this sharing and integration will be agreed between yourself
and your physician, prior to the release of any proprietary information kept with
your doctor’s office. However, Drisonline may share information provided by you
as part of your Personal Health Record or otherwise in order to update and supplement
the medical information on file at your doctor’s office.
Your Personal Health Record.
The PHP or Personal Health Record is a space to keep an up to date account of your
entire health profile online, including any chronic or congenital medical conditions,
allergies, injuries, etc., as well as medication lists and vital statistics. You
are asked to enter this information personally, and to maintain your PHP to keep
it current. You can authorize others to give them access to your account and your
PHP as well.
In order to complete registration and to be able to use Drisonline services, you
will be asked to complete the PHP and confirm the information provided, and to read
and consent to Drisonline's Terms of Use. You have the ability to request not to
receive information from Drisonline if you so choose.
Online Visits.
The Online Doctor Visit and Ask a Doctor option are both interactive interviews,
guided by questions reviewed or crafted by your doctor to uncover clinically relevant
information and build an accurate, multi-faceted picture of the complaint in light
of a patient’s overall health. When reviewing your completed symptom and Reason
for Visit questionnaires, your doctor will have access to your Personal Health Record.
Subscriber/User Credit Card and Health Plan/Insurance Information.
Drisonline requests financial information, the name of applicable health plans and
your health insurer’s information. You will be asked to confirm this insurer information
in order to access many of the services offered by Drisonline. This information
is used for billing purposes and co-pays.
Subscriber/User Log Files.
Drisonline collects and stores the Internet Protocol (IP) address of the computer
you are using; the name of the domain and host from which you access the Internet;
the browser software you use and your operating system; the date and time you access
the service; and the Internet address of the Web site from which you directly linked
to Drisonline. Drisonline uses this log file information to analyze trends, administer
the service, and monitor service traffic and usage patterns for internal security
purposes and to help make the Drisonline service more useful.
Physician and Staff Information.
We collect contact information as part of the registration process for member doctors
on Drisonline, just as we ask patients. Doctors give their name, primary specialty,
office address, phone number and email addresses. Doctors can also provide additional
contact information if they like. Doctors have their own password logins and a separate
area of the website only they and their designated staff can access. We offer our
member doctors unprecedented control at Drisonline, because we understand that it
is their judgement, expertise, and medical acumen that powers the system, and we
want them to participate as much as possible in the process. Doctors in the Drisonline
system at a minimum review all the symptom questionnaires to be used in their online
practices, and if they wish to add their own questions or alter or eliminate questions
they are encouraged to do so.
Doctors and other healthcare providers who are members of the Drisonline system
can designate members of their staff to give them access to patient information,
and to perform certain tasks as directed by the doctor. If you have questions about
which staff members are permitted to view your health information or perform various
tasks within the Drisonline online health services, please contact your doctor’s
office. These matters are strictly within the control of the member doctor, and
are matters of his or her discretion only. Similarly, how much of your information
your doctor chooses to transmit to another doctor to whom he or she refers you is
a matter entirely within that doctor’s control and discretion. In most cases, your
medical authorization agreement with your doctor will cover such issues and ensure
your privacy under HIPAA. This statement is no sense to be relied upon in place
of direct confirmation of any and all privacy issues with your doctor’s office.
Billing Information.
Drisonline requests billing information from you in cases where there is a patient
co-payment required by your insurer, or where your insurance does not cover some
or all of the online health services Drisonline offers that you wish to use. This
information is held on a secure server and may be safely entered. Your doctor may
require this information even where Drisonline does not.
Log Files.
Drisonline collects and stores the Internet protocol address of the computer you
are using; the name of the domain and host from which you access the Internet; the
browser software you use and your operating system; the date and time you access
the service; and the Internet address of the Web site from which you directly linked
to Drisonline. Drisonline uses this log file information to analyze trends, administer
the service, and monitor service traffic and usage patterns for internal security
purposes and to help make the Drisonline service more useful
Use of Your Information.
In addition to the uses and disclosures of information outlined above, your information
may also be used and disclosed as follows:
By your doctor or your doctor’s staff.
These healthcare providers can use contact and/or health information about you stored
by Drisonline to: invite you to register for Drisonline, update your PHR, screen
for drug and allergy interactions when a medications are prescribed, provide you
with educational material aimed at your personal health and wellness needs, send
appointment reminders, send prescriptions to pharmacies, send a Patient Referral
request to another doctor, send you preventive care reminders or adherence reminders
for a chronic-care regimen or a treatment plan, update and supplement their existing
medical records.
By Drisonline.
Drisonline may use contact and/or health information about you to: invite you to
register for Drisonline, invite your doctor, at your request, to register with Drisonline,
to update your PHR, supply required information to pharmacies filling your prescriptions,
supply required claims information to your health plan reimbursing your online care,
supply certain claims data to ensure your receipt of certain insurance benefits,
determine service use and traffic patterns, evaluate and improve the Drisonline
service, review customer feedback, operate the Drisonline service, provide information
required by law, communicate with customers about their service issues, update users
of Drisonline.com about its benefits, use your doctor’s or insurer’s information
to customize your experience, or (with permission) to display their logo on Drisonline
web pages. Drisonline will also uses the contact and billing information you supply
to bill and provide claims data for OnlineVisits and Ask a Doctor Visits, as well
as for any other service your doctor or other healthcare provider elect to charge
a fee for. Drisonline may also use the contact, billing and/or health information
provided by you in our service to provide your physician or other healthcare provider
with updated and/or supplemental information for their files or systems. Drisonline
will not disclose personal information (contact, health and/or billing) to third
parties other than as provided for in this Privacy Policy, except if we believe
in good faith that the law requires it, or if you have otherwise consented to additional
use or disclosure of the information.
By Pharmacies and Prescription Plans:
Your doctor may use the Drisonline service to send your prescription to a pharmacy.
When your doctor does this we will release your name, address, prescription information
and insurance plan/payment information to the pharmacy. In addition, we may disclose
certain necessary claims data to other entities (for example, the provider of your
drug benefit) as required to coordinate your pharmacy benefits, typically, health
plan, mailing address, billing information for co-payment purposes.
By Insurers:
When your physician elects to charge for an Online Visit, Ask a Doctor, or any other
online service offered by Drisonline, and your health plan has an agreement with
Drisonline to cover such services, we will release your contact information, the
date of service, a description of the service performed, and the charge for that
service to your health plan for payment purposes.
By Drisonline Business Partners:
Drisonline works with some business partners to make our services available to consumers,
and reserves the right to make new partnerships as required. We ask companies we
do business with to support our privacy policy. We share information only as necessary
for a third party business to provide a service. Personally identifiable information
may not be used by these business partners, except for the explicit purpose of providing
these services.
By Third Parties:
If you use Drisonline to link to another website, you may decide to disclose personal
information there, such as contact information. We do not assume click-through liability.
When you contact a third party and provide personal information on that site, that
third party may use it to obtain more information about you or elect to use your
personal data in some other way. These activities take place without reference to
Drisonline, regardless of whether you linked to this third party’s site from Drisonline.
Drisonline makes no representations and offers no guarantees about the privacy policies
and practices of other companies. The Drisonline Privacy Policy does not apply when
you leave Drisonline and go to a third party Web site from Drisonline. We structure
the Drisonline service so that no personal or health information goes in the search
string or URL when you move from the Drisonline service to a linked site. However,
we encourage you to be vigilant, and to read the privacy statements of any site
that collects personally identifiable information.
For Doctors and their Staff:
Doctors can always view all the information entered at Drisonline voluntarily by
doctors, patients, and other authorized users. A doctor may authorize any staff
member (or more than one) and give that person or persons access to patient messages
and account information, and/or permit them to respond to patients on the doctor’s
behalf in some situations. Information about their organization, practice, and personal
background provided by doctors, other healthcare providers, and associated authorized
staff may be used to: invite patients to register with Drisonline, invite other
doctors to register with Drisonline, supply required provider information to pharmacies;
supply required provider claims information to health plans and other payors reimbursing
for patients’ online health services, help doctors provide preventive care reminders,
and appointment reminders, as well as other messages, to help doctors provide patients
with educational material aimed at their personal health and wellness needs, to
track prescribing and treatment trends and patterns, to determine service use, to
survey doctors for evaluations for improvements to Drisonline services, to operate
the Drisonline system and to decide what services will meet our members' needs,
to provide information required by law, to communicate with doctors about customer
service issues, to update doctors on service and Drisonline benefits. Drisonline
may use a sponsoring organization's information to customize a doctor’s website
on request, or display the sponsoring organization's logo on Drisonline web-pages
with permission. Drisonline uses the contact and billing information doctors supply
to bill doctors for their use of and access to Drisonline. Drisonline uses the contact
and billing information supplied to remit payments to doctors for services charged
to their patients using the Drisonline service and collected by Drisonline.
Disclosure of Provider Information.
It is our policy to ask companies with whom we do business to support the same privacy
policy we do. These parties are not allowed to use personally identifiable information
except for the particular purpose for which it was provided. Drisonline will disclose
the necessary provider information (for example, name, license number, provider
number, etc) in order to submit claims to relevant health plans and health insurance
payors that pay for services doctors and healthcare providers provide via Drisonline
to patients. When you or your patient uses the Drisonline service to send a prescription
to a pharmacy, we will release the necessary provider information to the pharmacy
in order to fill that prescription.
Drisonline may make available certain provider information (for example, name and/or
DEA #) to potential business partners in order to provide an aggregate landscape
of the Drisonline healthcare provider community (for example, aggregate number of
doctors, general types of practice). This information will not be used by the potential
business partner for marketing and/or any other purpose.
What does Drisonline do with anonymous (de-identified) information?
Drisonline removes your identity from your personal information (contact, health
and/or financial) and may work with it as anonymous ("de-identified") information.
Individual information is information about a user presented in a form where information
about one anonymous user would be indistinguishable from information relating to
other anonymous users ("a 40 year old female"). Individual information is not in
a form that allows anyone studying the information to personally identify any user.
Aggregate information is information that describes the habits, usage patterns and/or
demographics of users as a group but does not reveal the identity of particular
users. Your anonymous data is combined with the anonymous data of other Drisonline
users and becomes statistics.
We might use aggregate information within Drisonline to understand the needs of
the Drisonline community of users and determine what kinds of programs and services
we can help your healthcare provider offer to you. Drisonline could use this anonymous
information to give potential users, doctors, clinics, hospitals or business partners
a picture of the Drisonline community and services.
Aggregate information may be provided or sold to third parties. Absolutely no personal
identifying information is included in the aggregate reports; each individual remains
anonymous.
Locator information is your name, electronic messaging address, physical address,
or data that enables someone to personally identify you. Drisonline and your Internet
Access Provider may use Locator Information as is necessary to enforce a term of
the Drisonline Terms of Use.
Can Patients Opt Out or Opt In to Specific Uses Of Their Information?
Medical Information. If you wish to share your medical information
with your doctor, you must have the proper consents on file with this doctor or
other healthcare provider. This is usually already a matter of record because you
are already a registered patient. If you are sent to a new healthcare provider,
as a referral from your primary care doctor for example, you must be sure all HIPAA
forms and other consents that may be required for a given medical procedure are
properly executed and on file.
If you no longer wish to allow a particular healthcare provider, a member of that
provider’s staff or designee of the doctor/provider, or an authorized member of
that doctor’s physician group to view your medical information, you may must inform
both Drisonline and the physician/healthcare provider so that the Personal Health
Record can be deactivated in this physician’s records and your medical information
will no longer be viewable updates to your Health Record.
You have the ability to request the activation or deactivation the authorization
of a Patient Account Manager at any time by notifying your Provider. Once your Provider
deactivates a Patient Account Manager, they will be able to view a static version
of your Health Record as of the deactivation, but will no longer be able to view
updates to your Health Record.
As we add services to the Drisonline service that require the collection, use or
disclosure of data other than as set forth in this Privacy Policy, we will offer
users the option to opt in or out of those services.
Storage and Maintenance of Information. Drisonline stores and maintains
all electronic communications sent via Drisonline, the content of all Online Visits
and Ask a Doctor Visits, your Patient Home Page and Personal Health Record, contact
information, financial information and all attachments and/or files uploaded or
posted to Drisonline for a period of at least seven (7) years. For more information
regarding the storage and maintenance of information, please refer to Drisonline's
Record Retention and Destruction Policy which is available upon request.
Security. All communication between you and the Drisonline server
is secured by using SSL version 3.0, which uses 128-bit encryption.
Drisonline takes all reasonable measures to secure your data on our servers, in
our data center. Our data center is both physically and electronically secured.
Our servers are protected behind the Internet by using a firewall which is a hardware
and software system that blocks access by unauthorized parties.
For more information, please refer to Drisonline's Security Measures.
Does Drisonline Use Cookies? In order to personalize our service
for you and to collect aggregate, non-personal information regarding service usage
by all of our users, Drisonline uses "cookies." A "cookie" is a small text file
that Drisonline transfers to your computer's hard drive. Drisonline assigns each
computer a different cookie. The cookie assigns a random, unique number to your
computer. The cookie does not contain personally identifiable information.
Your browser software can be set to warn you of cookies or reject all cookies. Most
browsers offer instructions on how to reset the browser to reject cookies in the
"Help" section of the toolbar. If you reject our cookie, you will not be able to
use Drisonline.
Sponsors or partners on Drisonline may also use their own cookies when you click
on a hypertext link to their site or service. We do not control these third parties'
use of cookies, or how they manage the non-personal information that they gather
through them. You should review the privacy policy of other sites you link to from
our service to understand how these other sites use cookies and how they use the
information they collect through the use of cookies on their own sites.
What can I do to protect my Privacy?
In order to protect your privacy while you can:
• Never share your sign in name or password
• Always sign out when you are finished using the service.
What if I have questions or concerns regarding this Privacy Policy?
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or the use of your information
via Drisonline, please contact us at sam@drisonline.com.
How will you be notified about changes to this Privacy Policy?
Drisonline will only use your personally identifiable information in the manner
described in the Privacy Policy in effect when we collected the information from
you. However, we reserve the right to change the terms of this Privacy Policy at
any time by posting those changes on our service so you are always aware of what
information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we
disclose it. If at any point we decide to use personal health information in a manner
different from that stated at the time it was collected, we will notify users by
way of e-mail. You will be given the opportunity to opt out for any additional uses
or disclosures of your personal health information that you made available to us
prior to any such change in our Privacy Policy.
In addition, we urge you to check here for any updates to this Privacy Policy from
time to time.