Effective Date: December 20, 2021

PM Pediatrics Management Group, LLC , together with our affiliated practices, entities and agents (“PM Pediatrics”, “we”, “us” and “our”), is committed to recognizing and respecting the privacy of your personal information.  This Privacy Policy describes how we collect, use and share non-patient information about you that is collected from PM Pediatrics®-branded websites, mobile applications, or other online platforms or services that we may provide (collectively, the “Online Services”).  This Policy also describes your rights and other information that local laws may require us to give you.  

IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY, THEN YOU SHOULD NOT USE OR INTERACT WITH OUR ONLINE SERVICES, AND YOU SHOULD NOT PROVIDE US YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION.  However, even if you do not agree to this Privacy Policy, you may still use the Patient Services (described below).  If you have questions about the different types of information or services, please contact us.  

PATIENT SERVICES & YOUR HEALTH INFORMATION:  Several of our Online Services permit you to interact with us as a patient of PM Pediatrics (“Patient Services”).  Information that you send using Patient Services is Protected Health Information (PHI) that is regulated by HIPAA and our HIPAA Notice of Privacy Practices, not this Privacy Policy.  The following are Patient Services:

  • Booking an appointment online. 
  • Attending a telehealth consultation with your provider. 
  • Accessing your medical records on the patient portal.  
  • Paying your bill online. 
  • Messaging with our provider before or after your medical visit or health consultation. 

CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS:  If you are a resident of California, please read the SUPPLEMENT FOR CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS below, to review privacy disclosures that apply to your information.  

Important Note Regarding Children

Even though PM Pediatrics provides pediatric healthcare, our Online Services are not designed or directed toward children and minors under 13 years of age.  The Online Services do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13.  Any personal information submitted via the Online Services regarding any minor under the age of 18 must be submitted by or with the consent of the minor’s parent, guardian or legal representative.  By submitting any such information, you expressly consent that PM Pediatrics may use the information as described by this Privacy Policy.  PM Pediatrics reserves the right to delete all personal information of children under 13, without notice or liability to you or anyone.  NOTE: Certain state laws may permit minors access to their identifiable health information directly through their physician. 

Information Collection

“Personal information” in this Privacy Policy means all information and data that we collect or otherwise obtain that can be linked to you individually, to your device, or to your household.  For example, your name and email address are personal information.  

In the past 12 months, PM Pediatrics has collected the following categories of personal information for users of our Online Services.  Each of these categories may also have been shared with service providers or other third parties (see below under Third Party Sharing) for the purposes described herein:  

  • Personal identifiers:  Name, email address, other contact information. 
  • Protected classification identifiers:  Age and date of birth, gender. 
  • Phone number. 
  • Payment card information.  This may include a credit card used to pay your bill for services.  Payment card information captured from you as a patient will be governed by our HIPAA Notice of Privacy Practices.
  • Internet and online activity:  Devices that connect to the Internet generate and transmit various types of technical and other data automatically when they communicate with other devices over the internet.  This can include the make and model of your device, hardware and software versions, operating system, IP address, ISP (internet service provider), web browser type and version, device language preference, referring website, exit website, routing information, advertising identifier if you have it enabled on your device, links or pages you view when you connect to our Online Services, information about how and when you interact with our Online Services, and cookie contents. 
  • Geolocation data. 
  • Audiovisual information:  Certain Online Services may include features or functionality that receive or capture sounds and images from your device’s microphone, camera or other sensors if you permit access on the platform that operates your device.  For example, you may tap button on your device to capture images and video.  Or you may enable your camera and microphone for a telehealth visit.  The captured data will be personal information if personally associated with you.  NOTE:  Information collected from you as part of Patient Services, such as telehealth video and audio, will be governed by our HIPAA Notice of Privacy Practices. 

Reminder about Patient Services:  While interacting with us through the Patient Services, you may be asked to provide categories of information that are not listed above.  For example, you may provide a patient name and medical condition when booking an appointment, payment card information when you pay your bill, or a date of birth when accessing the patient portal.  Information that you provide as a patient of PM Pediatrics is Protected Health Information that is governed only by HIPAA and our HIPAA Notice of Privacy Practices, not by this Privacy Policy.  

 

Sources of Personal Information

We may collect your personal information from the following sources:

  • From you, when you provide us your personal information.  We collect your information when you interact with our Online Services and provide us your information in response to prompts, forms, buttons or audiovisual capture methods within the Online Services.  Any of our branded sites or services may be used to collect your personal information.  We collect your personal information if you submit it to us by other means, such as by including your personal information in a question that you submit to us through our website form. If you respond to surveys or communications that we send out, or participate in events that we organize, then we may also collect your personal information from those interactions. 
  • When transmitted by your device.  When your device interacts with our Online Services, it may automatically transmit to us the “Internet and online activity” data described above. 
  • When another person provides it to us.  We may receive your name, email, and other information if someone who knows you enters it into our Online Services. 
  • From our service providers and business partners.  When you interact with our service providers and business partners, they may collect information from you and provide that information to us. We may then use that information according to this Privacy Policy. 

Purposes of Collection

We may use your personal information for the following purposes:

  • Provide you the Online Services, respond to your communications and requests, and provide you the features and information you request.  For example, when you submit a question to “Dear Dr. Christina”, we use your information if we choose to reply or to motivate writing a longer post on the topic.
  • Develop new services, or enhance and improve our current service offerings, including by requesting your feedback on our services by asking you to fill out surveys about your experiences with us.  
  • Administer the Online Services and our systems, generate statistical information, monitor and analyze traffic and usage patterns, investigate complaints and violations of our policies, and improving or addressing issues with our site design or the Online Services. 
  • Improve our marketing efforts, including conducting market research using customer surveys, holding marketing events, and marketing our service offerings.  We may inform you about our new locations and services.  We may also use advertising networks to show you our ads when you visit or use third party online sites or services.  
  • To monitor, detect, protect against and investigate fraud, theft, threats to any individuals, or other illegal, illicit or potentially harmful or dangerous activity.  
  • To meet our legal obligations; comply with applicable law; comply with subpoenas court orders, or other governmental or legal requests; establish our legal rights; protect our property, rights and personnel; respond to court orders and other legal process; make disclosures to address unlawful or other acts that may endanger the health, safety or privacy of other customers or the general public.  We may also contact you in the event of material changes to this Privacy Policy.  
  • Create an aggregated and anonymized version of your personal information.  Once anonymized, this will no longer be personal information, so this Privacy Policy will not apply to it.
  • Share your personal information with third party companies, organizations or individuals when you consent to the sharing.

Third Party Sharing

Service Providers.  We may make your personal information available to our service providers to help run our business.  The service providers may process your information when we provide it to them as part of the Online Services.  They may also interact with you on our behalf and provide you certain Online Services directly.  

Note about Patient Services:  When service providers help us provide Patient Services, those service providers are business associates under HIPAA.  Our HIPAA Notice of Privacy Practices has more information about business associates.

Change in Control.  In the unlikely event that PM Pediatrics is sold or acquired, and another entity obtains control or ownership of PM Pediatrics, then that entity may access and possess your personal information. 

PUCC Sponsors.  With your permission and subject to your right to opt-out of such disclosures, we may also share certain personal information (specifically, name and email address) of the registrants for The Pediatric Urgent Care Conference (“PUCC”) presented by PM Pediatrics with our PUCC sponsors to use for their direct marketing purposes.  Once such personal information is disclosed to our PUCC sponsors, this Privacy Policy will no longer apply to that information.   We encourage you to read the privacy notices of every organization or business that houses your personal information.  

Security

We take precautions to protect your information, but we do not and cannot guarantee the absolute security of your information from interception, for example by determined hackers.  For personal information that we store, we have implemented safeguards (such as administrative policies) that are designed to ensure that the only parties who are granted access to your information are employees or other authorized recipients working on our behalf and who need the information to perform a specific job or fulfill a specific function (for example, billing or customer service).

Cookies; Do Not Track; Online Advertising

Cookies

PM Pediatrics uses “cookies” on the Online Services, for three purposes:  (1) session cookies for our sites to remember you as you click from page to page, (2) persistent cookies that may remember your login so you do not have to enter it every time, and (3) third party cookies to help with our marketing and advertising. A cookie is a piece of data stored on the hard drive of someone who uses our Online Services.  This helps us improve your access to our site and identify repeat visitors to our site. For instance, we may use a cookie to identify you when you log into our site, so that you do not have to enter your password more than once during your visit and to reduce the number of times you have to log in to our site, thereby saving you time. We may also use cookies to track and target the interests of our users to enhance the experience on our site. 

Most web browsers allow you to refuse to accept cookies; refer to your browser’s help documentation for more information.  But if you turn off or refuse to accept cookies, this may negatively impact your experience with our site.  

Customized Marketing

PM Pediatrics does not track your online activity when you browse third party Web sites or use third party online services. However, like many ecommerce businesses, we partner with third party advertising networks to support our marketing activities.  We currently use networks operated by Google (DoubleClick) and Microsoft.  The advertising networks use cookies that we place on our sites to enable the networks to help market our products online.  The cookies use anonymous but unique identifiers and PM Pediatrics does not provide your name or other identified information to the advertising networks.  The networks do not send us information about your external online activity.  If you click an ad, the browser on your computer or device may tell us the website where you clicked the ad. 

You can avoid certain targeted marketing by disabling cookies in your browser for our site or for all sites.  However, you may lose functionality if you disable cookies.  If you leave cookies enabled, you consent to our use of such third party advertising vendors and services, to their placement of cookies onto your computer, and to the privacy policies of the third party advertising networks.  You agree that if you leave cookies enabled, PM Pediatrics is not responsible for how the third party advertisers use your information.  Further, as new technologies are developed, we cannot promise that your online activity will never be tracked, such as by the company that developed your Internet browser. 

You may review Google’s privacy policy at //policies.google.com/privacy, and you may opt-out by visiting //adssettings.google.com.  Microsoft’s privacy statement is found at //privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement, with settings at //account.microsoft.com/privacy/ad-settings/.  If you desire to learn more about third party advertising networks, cookies, and opt-outs, please visit the Digital Advertising Alliance at //optout.aboutads.info/ and //www.networkadvertising.org/understanding-online-advertising/what-are-my-options/, and the Network Advertising Initiative at //www.networkadvertising.org/understanding-online-advertising/what-are-my-options.

Do Not Track Signals

Because there is no standard understanding of what a “Do Not Track” browser signal is supposed to mean, our website does not respond to those signals in any particular way.  To avoid tracking cookies, you may use an “incognito”, “private” or similar browser window to browse the Internet without tracking cookies.  However, the software manufacturer of your browser may still track your activity.  Please check with Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, DuckDuckGo or other manufacturer for more information. 

Links

Our Online Services may contain links to websites or Internet locations or services that are not run by or associated with PM Pediatrics. In that instance, we will not share your personal information with those other websites without your authorization and we are not responsible for the privacy practices of those other websites. When you click a link and leave our website or Online Service, please review the privacy policy of the new website, because it may be different from this Privacy Policy.

Amendments

We may amend this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we do, we will make that information available by posting a notice on this webpage. We encourage you to periodically revisit this Privacy Policy. Any amended Privacy Policy automatically replaces and supersedes all previous versions. Your continued use of the Online Services indicates your acceptance of the modifications, even as to information we have already collected. If you do not agree, you must stop using the Online Services. We may also use your contact information to directly notify you of certain changes to this Privacy Policy.

Contact Us

If you have questions or requests regarding this Privacy Policy, you may contact us using any of the following methods: 

  • Call our offices at (516) 869-0650 during regular East Coast business hours. 
  • By postal mail to PM Pediatrics, Attention: Privacy Policy, One Hollow Lane, Suite 301, Lake Success, NY 11042. 

SUPPLEMENT FOR CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS: Disclosures & Rights

California Residents Only

This section applies to you only if you are a resident of California.

California Rights

You have the following rights concerning your personal information:

  • Right to be informed about the (1) types of personal information we collect about you, (2) specific pieces of information that we have collected about you, (3) sources and purposes of the collection, and (4) third parties that receive your data.  
  • Right to request deletion of your data.
  • Right to know to whom we’ve sold or disclosed your data.
  • Right to opt out of the sale of your data, if we sell it.  (See below.) 
  • Right against discrimination if you do not provide us your data, unless the goods and services we provide you are related to the value of the data you provide us.

Exercising Your Rights

You may exercise your rights as a California resident, review and request changes to the personal information we collected about you, and contact us for more information about our privacy practices by using the information provided above under Contact Us. 

Verification Process

You may submit your California rights requests using any of the methods above.  However, for certain requests, California law permits or requires us to take additional steps to verify the identity and authority of the individual making certain requests information.  This is so we can protect your privacy and data.  Depending on the request or the sensitivity of the request, PM Pediatrics may ask that you provide two, three or more pieces of personal information that matches information in our records, so that we may confirm your identity prior to processing your request. 

Authorized Agent

If you wish to submit a California rights request through an authorized agent, then you may designate your authorized agent in writing by contacting us using any of the methods above and providing the following information:

  1. Your full name and date of birth
  2. Current address and telephone number
  3. Name of the authorized agent
  4. State whether the requested information should be delivered to the agent or to you.  Provide delivery instructions.
  5. State the types of requests that you authorize your agent to make, for example, Request to Know, Request to Delete, or Request to Opt-Out of Sales of Personal Information.
  6. Sign and date the agent authorization. 

If any of the above information is missing or cannot be verified, then we may request the information before processing your request.  We may request additional verification information depending on the nature or sensitivity of the request.  

Third Party Marketing 

PM Pediatrics does not disclose the personal information of California residents to third parties knowingly for their direct marketing purposes.

Sale of Information

PM Pediatrics does not engage in activity that a normal consumer would view as a ‘sale’ of personal information.  We do not take information that we learned about California residents and exchange it to an unrelated third party for money, to use for purposes that you did not intend.  Further, PM Pediatrics takes steps such that our marketing and advertising service providers restrict the use of your personal information to our business purposes, unless otherwise disclosed to you.  California law in the future may be clarified to view participation in advertising networks as a ‘sale’.  In that event, we may update our website and this Privacy Policy, or cease collection of your information if you are a resident of California. 

No Sale of Minor Information

PM Pediatrics does not have actual knowledge of any sale of the personal information of consumers under 16 years of age.   

This Privacy Policy may not be used or reproduced without our prior written consent.