Our online privacy is important to SpineCare of NY and The National Spine Research Foundation. This Privacy Policy explains the types of information we gather, what we do with it, and how you may correct or change information that we may collect.

This Privacy Policy discloses the privacy practices for https://spinecareofny.com/

USE OF THE SPINECARE OF NY WEBSITES SIGNIFIES YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF AND AGREEMENT TO COMPLY WITH OUR ENTIRE PRIVACY POLICY.

Collection and Use of Your Information

The goal of the SPINECARE OF NY web site is to provide current and useful information about SPINECARE OF NY, our services, our educational and research activities, our physicians, and information for physicians, other health providers, and members of the public in the broad area of musculoskeletal medicine. We therefore need to collect information about our users to understand their interests. We collect two types of information from you, “aggregate and anonymous information” and “personally identifiable information.”

• Collection of Aggregate and Anonymous Information.  Aggregate and anonymous information is information that we collect about users of the SPINECARE OF NY web site that cannot be tied back to a specific individual. Each time a user comes to the SPINECARE OF NY web site, we collect some information to help us assess what users wish to know. We collect users’ IP addresses (for example, whether the user logged on from a .com, .gov, .edu, or other domain), referral data (for example, the address of the last URL a user visited prior to clicking through to the SPINECARE OF NY web site), browser and platform type (for example, a Microsoft browser on an Apple platform), and information regarding how frequently our users request or indicate an interest in certain types of information on the SPINECARE OF NY web site. We collect this information to improve our content and keep it in line with the needs of our users. We will use this aggregate and anonymous information to direct our efforts to better meet the needs of our users, by analyzing how often users are accessing certain features of the SPINECARE OF NY web site.
• Collection of Personally Identifiable Information.  The SPINECARE OF NY web site may also collect personally identifiable information about you, our users, when you visit the SPINECARE OF NY web site. We only collect the personal information about you that you provide to us, and we only use that personal information for the purpose of providing information, services, or materials to you that you have requested, unless you specifically consent to (or, if required by applicable law, authorize in writing) other uses of your information.  If you register at any of the SPINECARE OF NY web site in order to use special services for registered users only, we will require that you provide your name and e-mail address, and may also require that you provide additional information, such as your address, and indicate your affiliation with SPINECARE OF NY.  We use this information only to improve your experience at the SPINECARE OF NY web site  and to enable you to maintain and gain access to your specially personalized areas of the SPINECARE OF NY web site. Your identifying information will be shared by us with authorized SPINECARE OF NY employees and staff, health care providers affiliated with SPINECARE OF NY, certain third party vendors who provide services to SPINECARE OF NY (as described more fully below), and other third parties as required by applicable law.  Your identifying information will not be otherwise shared without your written permission (or, if required by applicable law, authorization).  If you are using the SPINECARE OF NY web site to register and pay for an educational program, please read “Registration for Education Division Programs Through Authorize.Net®” below.  If you are using the SPINECARE OF NY web site to make a charitable donation to SPINECARE OF NY, please read “Giving to SPINECARE OF NY – Online Donations” below.Other specific instances when we collect personally identifiable information from you through the SPINECARE OF NY web site, and how we may use and/or disclose that information in those instances, include:
  • E-mails to Physicians.  If you send information to a physician e-mail address that is available through hyperlinks on the SPINECARE OF NY web site, then any personally identifiable information that you submit electronically to those e-mail addresses will be transferred from the SPINECARE OF NY web site to the offices of physicians who are members of the SPINECARE OF NY medical staff.  Many of these physicians are not employees of SPINECARE OF NY in their practice of medicine, and thus your information, when received by them, will be subject to their policies and procedures, and not this Privacy Policy or any other SPINECARE OF NY policies and procedures.
  • Information Requests (Through “Contact SPINECARE OF NY – Email SPINECARE OF NY”).  When you contact us through “Contact SPINECARE OF NY – Email SPINECARE OF NY,” you must submit your name and email address, and also select a subject from the drop-down menu and provide additional information about your request in the “Message” field.  If you contact us through “Contact SPINECARE OF NY – Email SPINECARE OF NY” for a physician referral, we will use your information to contact you with the name of a physician. If you use “Contact SPINECARE OF NY – Email SPINECARE OF NY” to request information from us, we may link your name or your email address to the types of information you provide or request from us so that we may send you materials that you may request or that may be of interest to you.  We also may share your information within SPINECARE OF NY and with our affiliated physicians, in order to provide you with the information that you request; however, your personal information will not be shared by us with any other company, individual or group without your written permission.  Whether you are requesting a physician referral or information, SPINECARE OF NY personnel may contact you regarding your request, for example, to help set up an appointment or to better determine the referral or information that is appropriate for you.  Please note that any subsequent correspondence with SPINECARE OF NY personnel or any of our affiliated physicians will not be subject to this Privacy Policy.
  • Patient Stories: If you click on “Share Your Story”, you will be taken to a fillable form where you will be asked to provide your contact information (name, email address, and phone number), hometown (city, state, and country), age, the name of procedure(s) you had at SPINECARE OF NY, and the name of your physician/therapist, and then there is a free-form box for you to tell your story as well as a place for you to submit photos or videos. If you then check a box to specifically authorize SPINECARE OF NY to use and disclose information you submit about your SPINECARE OF NY experience (including any photo or video that you submit), if SPINECARE OF NY accepts your story, we will electronically post it to https://spinecareofny.com/ and/or SPINECARE OF NY social media channels.  Patient stories that are accepted will be searchable so that others with similar conditions or injuries can learn more from your story. The fillable form also contains a check box to receive more information from SPINECARE OF NY. If that box is checked, you will receive our monthly newsletter and other information from SPINECARE OF NY.

Use of “Cookies”

A “cookie” is a small data file that web sites store on your hard drive when you visit them. “Web beacons” or “transparent gifs” (hereafter referred to as “beacons”) are usually a 1pixel by 1pixel transparent image that are served by websites when you visit them or by third party vendors such as Google and Facebook. The SPINECARE OF NY web site uses cookies and beacons to record aggregate and anonymous information about you.  These files allow us to measure activity on the SPINECARE OF NY web site, which we use to improve your use of them.  The SPINECARE OF NY web site also use these files to track movement to and on the SPINECARE OF NY web site, and to determine which areas and features of the SPINECARE OF NY web site are most popular by measuring user activity.  We use this information to make improvements and updates to improve users’ experience on the SPINECARE OF NY web site.  The SPINECARE OF NY web site will not use these files to record any of the content of the personalized areas you create as a registered user, or to retrieve any other information from your computer. SPINECARE OF NY also uses cookies and beacons to track the use of digital advertising and to tailor advertisements to you (both third party advertising that appears on the SPINECARE OF NY web site and SPINECARE OF NY advertising that appears on other web sites) based on your interactions with the SPINECARE OF NY web site (retargeting or remarketing). For example, we may use these files to transmit non-personally identifiable website usage information to third parties in order to show you advertising for SPINECARE OF NY when you visit other web sites.

Most computers’ internet browsers (such as Microsoft Internet Explorer®, Mozilla Firefox®, Apple Safari®, and Google Chrome®) are set to accept cookies. If you prefer, you may set your computer’s internet browser to refuse cookies or to alert you when cookies are being sent.

Our Commitment to Children’s Privacy

Protecting the privacy of children is very important to SPINECARE OF NY.  Thus, we never collect or maintain personally identifiable information from anyone we actually know to be under age 13.

Links to Other Sites

In order to provide our users with other valuable information, the SPINECARE OF NY web site contain links to web sites other than our own. SPINECARE OF NY does not control the content that appears on linked web sites that are not clearly identified as part of the SPINECARE OF NY web site. These links are provided only for your convenience and, accordingly, you access these linked web sites at your own risk. However, we wish to try to ensure the integrity of the SPINECARE OF NY web site and our destination links, so any comments pertaining to the SPINECARE OF NY web site or any web sites accessed through the SPINECARE OF NY web sites’ destination links would be greatly appreciated.  SPINECARE OF NY exercises no authority over and is not responsible for any of these linked third-party web sites, each of which maintains independent privacy and data collection policies and procedures, and each of which is responsible for its own content.  These web sites may send their own cookies to you and may collect information from you and use it in a way that may be inconsistent with this Privacy Policy (which applies only to the SPINECARE OF NY web site). So, whenever you link to a web site other than the SPINECARE OF NY web site, you should review that web site’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

Security

The SPINECARE OF NY web site use a variety of other measures to maintain the security of your personal information. Protocols have been developed to comply with the security requirements of government agencies and commercial organizations.

The SPINECARE OF NY web site is carefully secured to preserve the privacy of your personal information. However, please remember that no transmission of data over the Internet or any wireless network (for example, a WiFi Hotspot in a coffee shop or airport) can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. In addition, our security is dependent upon your efforts to protect the security of any computer you use to access the SPINECARE OF NY web site, including any wireless network you use, and also the confidentiality of the password you use to access the areas of the SPINECARE OF NY web site that require you to register and log-in.  As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, the SPINECARE OF NY web site cannot guarantee the absolute security of any information that you transmit to us or receive from us, and you therefore agree to use the SPINECARE OF NY web site at your own risk. Once we receive your transmission, we do make reasonable efforts to ensure its security on our systems.  All personally identifiable information about you that SPINECARE OF NY creates, receives, stores, or transmits is covered by our privacy and security policies.

Legal Disclaimers

Although we make efforts to preserve user privacy, we may need to disclose personal information when required by law or when we have a good faith belief that such action is necessary to comply with a judicial proceeding, a court order, or other legal process.  In addition, we reserve the right to report to law enforcement agencies any activities that we reasonably believe to be unlawful, and to release to such agencies information about users of the SPINECARE OF NY Web Sites who we reasonably believe to be engaged in or involved with such activities.

Finally, in the unlikely event that SPINECARE OF NY is (or all or substantially all of our assets are) acquired by a third party, merges with a third party, or is bankrupt or ceases operations and dissolves, you should expect that any information you submitted through the SPINECARE OF NY Web Sites will be transferred to a third party.

Changes to this Policy

The SPINECARE OF NY web site may update this Privacy Policy from time to time by posting revisions to this Privacy Policy on this site.

If we would like to make any substantial change in connection with use of any personally identifiable information that we have already collected from you through the SPINECARE OF NY web site, then we will contact you by e-mail to give you the option to accept or decline the proposed change in use of the personal information that we collected from you.

Your continued use of the SPINECARE OF NY web site after changes to this Privacy Policy are posted constitutes acceptance of each revised Privacy Policy regarding any information that we collect from you after the Privacy Policy is posted. If you do not agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy or any revised Privacy Policy, please do not use the SPINECARE OF NY web site.

Questions?

If you have questions or concerns regarding this Privacy Policy, you should contact SPINECARE OF NY offices directly.