Easter Seals Online Network Privacy Policy

Notification of Change
The Information We Collect
Opting Out
Your California Privacy Rights
Correct/Update Your Profile
Aggregate Information
Cookies
Security of Your Information
Tell-A-Friend, Ecards and Personal Fundraising Pages
Links to Other Web Sites
Information from Children
Transmission of Health-Related Data

Welcome to the Easter Seals Online Network, the Web site of Easter Seals, Inc. (Easter Seals headquarters) and participating Easter Seals affiliates across the country.

Because Easter Seals values the privacy of constituents visiting the Easter Seals Online Network, users of the Easter Seals Online Network have the right to manage their own personal information.

You can contact Easter Seals for more information related to the privacy of the information you provide online:

Mail:  233 South Wacker Drive, Suite 2400, Chicago, IL 60606.
Phone:  312-726-6200
Online:  Click here to contact Easter Seals via email. Your request will be answered within 2-3 business days.

Notification of Change
Easter Seals reserves the right to change this policy at any time. Easter Seals privacy policy will be kept up-to-date and clearly posted on our Web site.

The Information We Collect
On many pages of the Easter Seals Online Network -- in particular when donating online, completing an action alert, registering for a special event, purchasing a product, or completing various feedback forms -- visitors are asked to list name, address, and other personal contact information. Information collected is specifically and knowingly provided by site visitors and may include name, email address, format preference (HTML vs. text), address, telephone number, interests and other similar information. Collecting this information helps Easter Seals to better provide site visitors with relevant and useful content.

Easter Seals has partnered with Convio, Inc. to power the Web content, email and transaction processing capabilities to serve our constituents and fulfill our mission on the Internet. Convio, Inc. is an Internet software and services company that provides online electronic Constituent Relationship Management (eCRM) solutions for nonprofit organizations and higher education institutions. Convio will not disclose your name or other personally identifiable information (such as your e-mail address or phone number) to any party other than Easter Seals.

Neither Easter Seals nor Convio store sensitive information such as credit card numbers. When an online transaction is completed through the Easter Seals Online Network, such as a charitable contribution, credit card information is used solely for the purpose of completing that specific transaction and is not retained in the Easter Seals or Convio database.

Easter Seals will not sell, share or exchange personal contact information collected from this Web site with other organizations. If a user has a previous relationship with Easter Seals through another channel (i.e., mail, phone), Easter Seals will occasionally rent or exchange those names and addresses with other organizations as a way of providing extra funds to help support services. If you do not want to participate in this program, please let us know.

Visitors to the Easter Seals Online Network are not required to share any personally identifiable information. Users who do not wish to share personal information when visiting the Easter Seals Online Network can still access the Network's Web pages and the valuable information provided.

Opting Out
Easter Seals provides site visitors with the opportunity to opt-out of receiving our online and offline communications.

If you would like to opt-out of receiving email communications please update your user profile. Email unsubscribe requests are processed immediately.

To discontinue the receipt of postal mail, please contact Easter Seals. Shortly, Easter Seals will be adding the capability to remove your name from our postal mailing list online. You'll need to register as user of the Easter Seals Online Network. Please note: there is a 8-12 week lapse period due to the fact that a subsequent mailing may already be in production. If you do receive another mailing, please disregard it.

Your California Privacy Rights
To review a special notice for California residents only per California Privacy Law (SB27): Exchanging, Renting, Reselling Personal Information, please visit the "Your California Privacy Rights" section. 

Correct/Update Your Profile
Easter Seals offers the option to change and modify personally identifiable information. Upon your request, Easter Seals will remove personally identifying information retained in organizational databases. If you are a registered user of this site, you can access your Easter Seals profile and update your contact information and user preferences by clicking here.

Easter Seals reserves the right to maintain information on users who have had their access to the Easter Seals Online Network blocked.

Aggregate Information
Demographic and profile data (i.e., age, gender, browser usage) is also collected via the Easter Seals Online Network. Easter Seals uses such data to improve marketing and promotional efforts, statistically analyze site usage, improve content and product offerings and to customize site content, layout, and services. Additionally, this data may be shared with third parties on an aggregated basis. Easter Seals does not share personally identifying information with third parties, except to a court or governmental agency if required by law and as stated above in the section titled "The Information We Collect."

Cookies
A cookie is a small text file a Web site places on a site visitor’s computer hard drive. Its purpose is to let the site know when a user visits and to perform certain functions such as saving passwords and personal preferences.
 
Cookies help evaluate visitors' use of a Web site, such as what viewers want to see and what they never read. This information allows Easter Seals to better focus online information and to concentrate on information people are using.

Your browser is probably set to accept cookies. If you would like to turn this feature off, you will need to change the settings of your Internet browser.

Security of Your Information
All credit card and personal profile information provided to Easter Seals or our Internet software partner, Convio, Inc., is transmitted using SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption using Verisign as a payment gateway. SSL is a proven coding system that allows a browser to automatically encrypt, or scramble, data before it is sent.

Easter Seals also protects account information by placing it on a secure portion of the Easter Seals Online Network that is only accessible by certain qualified employees of Easter Seals. Unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet is 100% secure. Easter Seals strives to protect your information, however cannot ensure or warrant the security of such information.

Tell-A-Friend, Ecards and Personal Fundraising Pages
If you elect to use the referral service to inform a friend about a page on the Easter Seals Online Network, send an ecard, or raise funds for Easter Seals by soliciting friends and family, you will be asked for the friend's name and email address. Easter Seals will automatically send the friend a one-time email inviting them to visit the site. Easter Seals stores this information to send this one-time email only. In addition, the contact information will be maintained solely for the future convenience of the individual who provided the information -- to send subsequent ecards or fundraising reminders/updates.

Links to Other Web Sites
Easter Seals has links to other Web sites outside of the Easter Seals Online Network. Easter Seals is not responsible for the content of any linked Web site, or any link contained in a linked Web site, or any changes or updates to such Web sites. The inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement by Easter Seals of that Web site.

In addition, please be aware that Easter Seals is not responsible for the privacy practices of such other Web sites. Easter Seals encourages you to read the privacy statements of each and every Web site that requests personal information from you.

Information from Children
Easter Seals does not seek to collect personal information about children through the Easter Seals Online Network. If a child submits information through any part of the Network, and Easter Seals is aware that the user submitting the information is a child, the information is not used for any purpose, nor is it disclosed to third parties. Easter Seals will comply with all regulations set forward by the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). To learn more about COPPA, visit the Federal Trade Commission.

Transmission of Health-Related Data
Easter Seals understands the sensitivity of collecting and using health-related data. Personally identifiable health-related data collected on the Easter Seals Online Network will not be shared with entities other than Easter Seals, Inc., and Easter Seals affiliates. Any transfer of personally identifiable health-related data between Easter Seals organizations will take place in a secure environment with access allowed only to certain qualified employees of Easter Seals. Easter Seals will comply with all regulations set forward by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). To learn more about HIPAA, visit the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights.

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
Notice of Privacy Practices
Easter Seals Eastern Pennsylvania
Effective Date: April 14, 2003

THIS NOTICE DESCRIBES HOW HEALTH INFORMATION ABOUT YOU* MAY BE USED AND DISCLOSED AND HOW YOU CAN GET ACCESS TO THIS INFORMATION. 

*The use of "you" or "your" throughout this notice and all of this agency's HIPAA documentation can also be understood to mean your child when your child is the consumer and you are the legal guardian. Please review it carefully.

If you have any questions about this notice, please contact:

Deborah Hill, CFO
Easter Seals Eastern PA
1501 Lehigh Street, Suite 201
Allentown, PA 18103
610.289.4282 ▪ deborah.hill@easterseals-easternpa.org

Our Pledge Regarding Health Information
We understand that health information about you and your health care is personal.  We are committed to protecting health information about you.  We create a record of the care and services you receive from us.  We need this record to provide you with quality care and to comply with certain legal requirements.  This notice applies to all of the records of your care generated by this health care practice, whether made by your therapist or others working in this agency.  This notice will tell you about the ways in which we may use and disclose health information about you.  We also describe your rights to the health information we keep about you and describe certain obligations we have regarding the use and disclosure of your health information.

We are required by law to:

• make sure that health information that identifies you is kept private;
  
• give you this notice of our legal duties and privacy practices with respect to health information about you; and
  
• follow the terms of the notice that is currently in effect.

How We May Use and Disclose Information About You
The following categories describe different ways that we use and disclose health information.  For each category of uses or disclosures, we will explain what is meant and try to give some examples.  Not every use or disclosure in a category will be listed.  However, all of the ways we are permitted to use and disclose information will fall within one of the categories.

For Treatment: We may use health information about you to provide you with health care treatment or services.  We may disclose health information about you to therapists, doctors, nurses, technicians, health students or other personnel who are involved in taking care of you.  They may work at our agency or at a doctor's office, lab, pharmacy or other health care provider to whom we may refer you for consultation, to take x-rays, to perform lab tests, to have prescriptions filled, or for other treatment purposes.

For Payment: We may use and disclose health information about you so that the treatment and services you receive from us may be billed to and payment collected from you, an insurance company or a third party.  For example, we may need to give your health plan information about your office visit so your health plan will pay us or reimburse you for the visit.  We may also tell your health plan about a treatment you are going to receive to obtain prior approval or to determine whether your plan will cover the treatment.

For Health Care Operations: We may use and disclose health information about you for operations of our health care practice.  These uses and disclosures are necessary to run our practice and make sure that all of our consumers receive quality care.  For example, we may use health information to review our treatment and services and to evaluate the performance of our staff in caring for you.  We may also combine health information about many consumers to decide what additional services we should offer, what services are not needed, whether certain new treatments are effective, or to compare how we are doing with others and to see where we can make improvements.  We may remove information that identifies you from this set of health information so others may use it to study health care delivery without learning who our specific consumers are.

Fundraising Activities: We may use health information about you to contact you in an effort to raise money for our not-for-profit operations.  We may disclose health information to a foundation related to our practice so that the foundation may contact you in raising money for our practice.  We only will release contact information such as your name, address and phone number and the dates you received treatment or services from us.  Please let us know if you do not want us to contact you for such fundraising efforts.

As Required By Law. We will disclose health information about you when required to do so by federal, state or local law.

To Avert a Serious Threat to Health or Safety. We may use and disclose health information about you when necessary to prevent a serious threat to your health and safety or the health and safety of the public or another person. Any disclosure, however, would only be to someone able to help prevent the threat.

Public Health Risks. We may disclose health information about you for public health activities. These activities generally include the following:

• to prevent or control disease, injury or disability;
• to report child abuse or neglect;
• to report reactions to medications or problems with products;
• to notify people of recalls of products they may be using;
• to notify person or organization required to receive information on FDA-regulated products;
• to notify a person who may have been exposed to a disease or may be at risk for contracting or spreading a disease or condition;
• to notify the appropriate government authority if we believe a consumer has been the victim of abuse, neglect, or domestic violence. We will only make this disclosure if you agree or when required or authorized by law.

Health Oversight Activities. We may disclose health information to a health oversight agency for activities authorized by law. These oversight activities include, for example, audits, investigations, inspections, and licensure. These activities are necessary for the government to monitor the health care system, government programs, and compliance with civil rights laws.

Lawsuits and Disputes. If you are involved in a lawsuit or a dispute, we may disclose health information about you in response to a court or administrative order. We may also disclose health information about you in response to a subpoena, discovery request, or other lawful process by someone else involved in the dispute, but only if efforts have been made to tell you about the request or to obtain an order protecting the information requested.

Law Enforcement. We may release health information if asked to do so by a law enforcement official:

• in response to a court order, subpoena, warrant, summons or similar process;
• about a death we believe may be the result of criminal conduct;
• about criminal conduct at our facility; and
• in emergency circumstances to report a crime; the location of the crime or victims; or the identity, description, or location of the person who committed the crime.

Coroners, Health Examiners and Funeral Directors. We may release health information to a coroner or health examiner. This may be necessary, for example, to identify a deceased person or determine the cause of death. We may also release health information about consumers to funeral directors as necessary to carry out their duties.

Your Rights Regarding Health Information About You
You have the following rights regarding health information we maintain about you:

Right to Inspect and Copy: You have the right to inspect and copy health information that may be used to make decisions about your care. Usually, this includes health and billing records. To inspect and copy health information that may be used to make decisions about you, you must submit your request in writing to Deborah Hill, CFO, Easter Seals Eastern PA, 1501 Lehigh Street, Suite 201, Allentown, PA 18103. If you request a copy of the information, we may charge a fee for the costs of copying, mailing or other supplies and services associated with your request.

We may deny your request to inspect and copy in certain very limited circumstances. If you are denied access to health information, you may request that the denial be reviewed. Another professional chosen by our agency will review your request and the denial. The person conducting the review will not be the person who denied your request. We will comply with the outcome of the review.

Right to Amend. If you feel that health information we have about you is incorrect or incomplete, you may ask us to amend the information. You have the right to request an amendment for as long as we keep the information. To request an amendment, your request must be made in writing, submitted to Deborah Hill, CFO, Easter Seals Eastern PA, 1501 Lehigh Street, Suite 201, Allentown, Pa 18103, and must be contained on one page of paper legibly handwritten or typed in at least 10 point font size. In addition, you must provide a reason that supports your request for an amendment.

We may deny your request for an amendment if it is not in writing or does not include a reason to support the request. In addition, we may deny your request if you ask us to amend information that:

• was not created by us, unless the person or entity that created the information is no longer available to make the amendment;
• is not part of the health information kept by or for our agency;
• is not part of the information which you would be permitted to inspect and copy; or
• is accurate and complete.

Any amendment we make to your health information will be disclosed to those with whom we disclose information as previously specified.

Right to an Accounting of Disclosures. You have the right to request a list accounting for any disclosures of your health information we have made, except for uses and disclosures for treatment, payment, and health care operations, as previously described. To request this list of disclosures, you must submit your request in writing to Deborah Hill, CFO, Easter Seals Eastern PA, 1501 Lehigh Street, Suite 201, Allentown, PA 18103. Your request must state a time period which may not be longer than six years and may not include dates before April 14, 2003. The first list you request within a 12 month period will be free. For additional lists, we may charge you for the costs of providing the list. We will notify you of the cost involved and you may choose to withdraw or modify your request at that time before any costs are incurred. We will mail you a list of disclosures in paper form within 30 days of your request, or notify you if we are unable to supply the list within that time period and by what date we can supply the list; but this date will not exceed a total of 60 days from the date you made the request.

Right to Request Restrictions. You have the right to request a restriction or limitation on the health information we use or disclose about you for treatment, payment, or health care operations. You also have the right to request a limit on the health information we disclose about you to someone who is involved in your care or the payment for your care, such as a family member or friend. For example, you could ask that we restrict a specified therapist or teacher from use of your information.

We are not required to agree to your request for restrictions if it is not feasible for us to ensure our compliance or believe it will negatively impact the care we may provide you. If we do agree, we will comply with your request unless the information is needed to provide you emergency treatment. To request a restriction, you must make your request in writing to Deborah Hill,CFO, Easter Seals Eastern PA, 1501 Lehigh Street, Suite 201, Allentown, PA 18103. In your request, you must tell us what information you want to limit and to whom you want the limits to apply.

Right to Request Confidential Communications. You have the right to request that we communicate with you about health matters in a certain way or at a certain location. For example, you can ask that we only contact you at work or by mail to a post office box. To request confidential communications, you must make your request in writing to Deborah Hill, CFO, Easter Seals Eastern PA, 1501 Lehigh Street, Suite 201, Allentown, PA 18103. We will not ask you the reason for your request. We will accommodate all reasonable requests. Your request must specify how or where you wish to be contacted.

Right to a Paper Copy of This Notice. You have the right to obtain a paper copy of this notice at any time. To obtain a copy, please request it from Deborah Hill, CFO, Easter Seals Eastern PA, 1501 Lehigh Street, Suite 201, Allentown, PA 18103, deborah.hill@easterseals-easternpa.org.  If we know that the electronic message has failed to be delivered, a paper copy of the notice will be provided. Even if you have received a notice electronically, you still retain the right to receive a paper copy upon request.

Changes To This Notice
We reserve the right to change this notice. We reserve the right to make the revised or changed notice effective for health information we already have about you as well as any information we receive in the future. We will post a copy of the current notice in our facility. The notice will contain on the first page, in the top right-hand corner, the effective date. In addition, each time you are readmitted to our services for treatment, we will offer you a copy of the current notice in effect.

Complaints
If you believe your privacy rights have been violated, you may file a complaint with us or with the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. To file a complaint with us, contact Deborah Hill, CFO, Easter Seals Eastern PA, 1501 Lehigh Street, Suite 201, Allentown, PA 18103. All complaints must be submitted in writing. You will not be penalized for filing a complaint.

Other Uses of Health Information
Other uses and disclosures of health information not covered by this notice or the laws that apply to us will be made only with your written permission. If you provide us permission to use or disclose health information about you, you may revoke that permission, in writing, at any time. If you revoke your permission, we will no longer use or disclose health information about you for the reasons covered by your written authorization. You understand that we are unable to take back any disclosures we have already made with your permission, and that we are required to retain our records of the care that we provided to you.

Acknowledgement of Receipt of This Notice
We will request that you sign a separate form or notice acknowledging you have received a copy of this notice. If you choose, or are not able to sign, a staff member will sign their name, date. This acknowledgement will be filed with your records.