Digital Privacy Policy
Revised June 2024
Purpose of this policy
This Digital Privacy Policy (“Policy”) applies to the websites and other mobile applications and online services which are owned, provided and operated by or on behalf of Novant Health, Inc. or its subsidiaries or majority-held joint ventures (collectively, “Novant Health,” “we,” “us,” “our”). This Policy describes how Novant Health collects and uses the personal information you provide, and other information that we collect when you visit our websites and utilize our online services and mobile applications (collectively, the “Services”). This policy also provides a link to the Novant Health SMS Terms and Conditions.
Your use of our web, mobile applications and online services constitutes acceptance to these terms.
MEDICAL DISCLAIMER
IF THIS IS A MEDICAL EMERGENCY, PLEASE IMMEDIATELY CALL EMERGENCY PERSONNEL (911) TO GET PROMPT MEDICAL ATTENTION. DO NOT RELY ON ELECTRONIC COMMUNCIATIONS FOR HELP WITH YOUR IMMEDIATE, URGENT MEDICAL NEEDS. THIS SITE AND OUR EMAIL ARE NOT DESIGNED TO RESPOND TO MEDICAL EMERGENCIES.
About Novant Health websites, mobile applications, and other online services
Novant Health provides Services through NovantHealth.org, other websites, mobile applications (including patient-facing mobile applications such as MyNovant, NHMaps, etc.), online services and voice-activated assistants to serve its patients and communities. Novant Health is committed to protecting your digital privacy.
When you visit, make appointments or use Novant Health Services, you may disclose certain personal information in order to access or use some of our content and Services. This information helps us to better determine and address the healthcare needs, interests and concerns of site visitors. Some of the data you provide is considered “personally identifiable information” or PII.
PII is information that, either alone or when combined with other information, identifies or relates to a particular individual. Examples of PII include (but are not limited to) name, email address, phone number, date of birth, mailing address, and online identifiers. This information may come from forms you fill out on our Sites or information we derive from your behavior while using our Sites. Additionally, some of the data you provide may be “protected health information” or PHI. PHI is protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Our use of PHI, as defined by HIPAA, is governed by Novant Health’s Notice of Privacy Practices, and is a separate document from this Digital Privacy Policy. PII is different than PHI, but they may overlap. We may use third parties to manage our Services and the information gathered through the use of the Services, including PHI and PII.
We provide content, products and services through our websites, mobile applications and voice activated assistants in order to educate consumers on healthcare and medical issues that may affect their daily lives. Our websites, mobile applications and voice activated assistants and their content and services are for your information. They are not medical, nursing or other professional healthcare advice, diagnosis or treatment. If you choose to send information to us through one of our Services, please know that by doing so, you are not establishing a treatment relationship between you and us.
If you use any part of the Services requiring secure access, you are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account and password and for restricting access to your computer, and you agree to accept responsibility for all activities that occur under your account or password. You should take care to protect any user logins and passwords and be aware of the risks of transmitting information over the internet, by email, in blogs or chats, or when using online sites. To ensure a secure exchange of sensitive information with Novant Health, you should access our services with a browser that supports modern website encryption.
Types of personal information you provide us
In various places on our websites, we request information from you through forms, such as interest forms and questionnaires. The exact information we need to collect (including PII) will depend on the purpose of the form. For example, when you sign up to create an account, we will ask for your name, address, email address and date of birth. If you want to schedule an appointment, we will ask for your age, sex, date of birth, reason for visit and type of appointment. If you pay your bill, we will also collect payment information (which is processed securely through a third-party payment processor). If you want information about services we offer (such as maternity, pediatric, orthopedic or general care), we may need your name, email and the types of information you interested in so we can send resources to you.
We will indicate on the form if a particular field is mandatory or optional. Please note that if you choose not to provide certain information, we may not be able to provide requested services.
Why we collect browsing information
Novant Health automatically collects certain information about how you reach and use our Services when you visit our sites. This allows us to administer our systems and gather relevant information about how our Services are being used, and to deliver content relative to you and your location. We may also use this information as needed to enforce our legal rights and when required to do so by law.
How we use cookies and other tracking technology
When you use or access the Sites, we, our service providers, and advertisers use cookies, device identifiers, web beacons, web bugs and similar technologies such as pixels, web beacons, and local storage. These are all examples of tools that collect information about how you use the Sites.
For example, “cookies” are small pieces of information that some websites store on your device when you visit some websites. A “web beacon,” “clear GIF,” “web bug,” or “pixel tag” is a tiny graphic file with a unique identifier that is similar in function to a cookie but would allow us to count the number of users that have visited certain pages or screens of our websites, and to help determine the effectiveness of promotional or advertising campaigns. When used in HTML-formatted email messages, web beacons can tell the sender whether and when the email has been opened. In contrast to cookies, which may be stored on your computer's hard drive, web beacons are typically embedded invisibly on pages or screens.
We use the information collected through these technologies (both alone and in combination with personal identifiable information) to help operate certain features of the Sites, to enhance your experience through personalization, and to help us better understand the features of the Sites that you and other users are most interested in.
Examples of the information that we track may include:
- Your internet protocol address
- The kind of browser, computer or device that you use
- The links you click within our websites, and the pages or information you viewed
- Location from which you accessed our Services
- Date and time of your visit
- Name of your wireless or internet service provider
- Third party websites you linked to from our Services
- Device location
Like many other websites, Novant Health Services use data compiled by this tracking technology to provide us with information about traffic to our site. We use this information to personalize the experience, such as recognizing a repeat visitor in order to offer the visitor a set of services or information requested in a previous visit. For example, if you personalize a webpage, or navigate within a website, a cookie helps the website to recall your specific information on subsequent visits. This makes it simpler for us to deliver relevant content to you – and it makes navigating the site easier by providing and saving your preferences and login information, as well as providing personalized functionality.
Most browsers give you a way to block, delete or disable cookies. Your mobile device may also allow you to disable transmission of unique identifiers and location data. If you choose to reject cookies or block device identifiers, please note that some features of the Sites may be limited or unavailable. The “Help” feature on most browsers and mobile devices will explain how you can change your cookie settings.
Some of our service providers may use cookies or other methods to gather information regarding your use of the Sites and may combine the information in these cookies with any Personal Identifiable Information about you that you may have provided or that they may have through permissible means. For example, cookies allow us to personalize our Site content for you, greet you by name, and remember your preferences so we can deliver you relevant content. How and when a third party uses that tracking information depends on their privacy policy, which you should review.
Use of analytics tools
We may use certain third-party analytics companies to help us present information or advertising that we believe may be of interest to you based on your use of Novant Health Services. After visiting a Novant Health website, you may see information about our services on non-Novant Health websites. This may occur as a result of a placement of a cookie or other tracking technology from your past browsing. For example, our advertisers may display targeted advertisements when you visit third-party websites and social networks based on your previous interactions with our Sites as tracked by cookies and similar technologies. This process also helps us understand how effective our content and marketing efforts are.
We may use certain technologies on certain websites and applications to help us analyze the traffic on our Services.
Your browser software can be set to warn you of cookies or to reject cookies. Most browsers offer instructions on how to reset the browser to reject cookies in the “Help” section of the toolbar. If you modify your web browser to reject cookies from our websites, certain functions and conveniences of our websites may not work properly. We cannot guarantee the effectiveness of your rejection of cookies through your web browsers and our websites’ technology capabilities to honor a browser’s signal or header request not to track the user’s activity. Also, if you select a setting on one device to reject tracking technology, that rejection may not carry over to another device. You should check your mobile device’s settings to determine whether you can control cookies through your mobile device.
Since sponsors or partners of our websites may use their own tracking technologies, when you click on a hypertext link to their website or service, you should carefully review the privacy policy of other websites that you access from our Services.
Novant Health may also use information collected from third party companies to provide a customized site experience on NovantHealth.org.
Marketing demographics
From time to time, we also provide information (including information gathered through the use of cookies) to social network service providers who help us develop and aggregate information on our users’ demographics. This enables us to display advertisements to other people likely to have similar interests as you.
Log file information
When you use our Sites, our servers automatically record information, including your Internet Protocol address (“IP Address”), browser type, referring URLs (meaning the site you visited before coming to our Sites), domain names associated with your internet service provider, information on your interaction with the Sites, and other such information. All of that information is known collectively as “log file information.” We may also collect similar information from emails sent to you, which then help us track which emails are opened and which links readers click. We use log file information to help make our sites more secure by identifying potential threats and vulnerabilities. We also use it to improve a Site’s function and content.
Communicating with you
By using the Services, you give permission to be contacted for treatment, payment, patient satisfaction, promotional or other healthcare operation purposes, including notification of a breach, via any of the telephone numbers, email addresses or other contact information you have registered or otherwise provided. This includes contact through a pre-recorded message, automatic dialing system, artificial voice, email message or text message. Contact may also be made by businesses helping Novant Health provide treatment, collect money that you owe, promote its products or conduct its operations.
Email, web and mobile communications that you send to us via the email links or web or mobile services provided through our Services may be shared with a customer service representative, employee, medical expert or a Novant Health vendor that is best qualified to address your inquiry. We make every effort to respond in a timely fashion once we receive communications.
Because mobile app communications, email, text or chat functions do not provide an entirely secure and confidential means of communication, please do not use mobile app communications, email, text or chat functions if you wish to limit access to your communications. Instead, call the medical clinic or department with which you are seeking to connect.
You may also receive push notifications from Novant Health applications. These may be disabled from the application(s) or your device settings.
Links to third-party websites
Our websites may contain links to third-party websites. These links are provided solely for your convenience.
Novant Health is not responsible for any of the content provided on third-party websites and makes no representations as to such content or its accuracy. All information, products, advertisements, and other content contained in third-party sites are neither approved nor endorsed by Novant Health, and Novant Health is not responsible for such information, products, advertisements or other content.
Use of any linked third-party website is solely at your own risk, and Novant Health is not responsible for information collected through the third-party websites, even if you found the site through us. Please note that use of any third-party site is subject to the terms and conditions of that third-party website, including the website’s privacy statement.
Social media
Our Services may include social media sharing features, such as Facebook and Twitter buttons. These features may collect your IP address, which page you are visiting on our site, and may set a cookie to enable the feature to function properly. Social media features are either hosted by a third party or hosted directly on our site. When you use these social media features, your interaction is covered by the privacy policy of the company providing that feature.
Children
We do not knowingly collect through the Services personally identifiable information from children under the age of 13. If Novant Health is made aware of information collected from a child under 13 through our Services, we will delete this information as required by applicable law.
Access to Novant Health Services from outside the United States
Use of our Services is intended to be limited to persons who reside in the states in which Novant Health operates. If you use visit or utilize our Services from outside the United States, please be aware that your information may be transferred to, stored or processed in the United States, where our servers are located and our databases are operated. The data protection and other laws of the United States and other countries might not be as comprehensive as those in your country. By using our Services, you understand that your information may be transferred to our facilities and to those third parties with whom we share it as described in this Policy.
Ownership and use
Novant Health owns or licenses the intellectual property rights to all components of the Services. You may use the Services only for your personal lawful purposes. Any other use of information accessed via the Services (such as reproduction, resale, publication, distribution or transmission) is not permitted.
Novant Health SMS terms and conditions
Find the terms and conditions for Novant Health SMS programs for receiving text messages from Novant Health. Any personal information obtained through this SMS program, will not be shared with any third parties or affiliates or would not be used for any marketing purposes.
Changes to our Digital Privacy Policy
We may occasionally update this Policy without notice to you. The date on which this Policy was last updated is presented at the top of this page. Unless otherwise indicated, any changes to this Digital Privacy Policy will apply immediately upon posting to the Sites. If the current version has been updated since your previous visit, we encourage you to review the Policy to be informed of how our web, mobile applications and online services use and protect your information.
How to contact us
If you have any questions about this Digital Privacy Policy, our mobile application, or our website or services, or how we handle your information, you may email us at WebTeam@NovantHealth.org. If you believe your privacy rights have been violated, you may email us at PrivacyOffice@NovantHealth.org. Please indicate your reason for contacting us. Your complaint or concern will be forwarded to the appropriate Novant Health department for response and resolution.