Notice of Privacy Practices
English: Notice of Privacy Practices
Español: Aviso de Practicas de Privacidad
Stewart Memorial's Privacy Policy
COLLECTING AND USING PERSONAL INFORMATION
Welcome to Stewart Memorial Community Hospital’s website. We appreciate your interest in us! When you visit and navigate our sites and when you communicate with us via our website, we will not collect personal information about you unless you provide us that information voluntarily. If you provide personal information to us voluntarily via our website, we will not sell, license or transmit that information outside of Iowa Health System and affiliated vendors/contractors who are involved in administering or providing services for fufillment of your specific information requests (newsletters and e-health information). We will disclose information in compliance with applicable laws and regulations and will require recipients to protect the information and use it only for the purpose provided.
By “personal information,” we mean data that is unique to an individual, such as a name, address, social security number or telephone number. We may request personal information from you at our site in order to deliver requested materials to you, respond to your questions or deliver a product or service.
E-MAIL AND ASKING QUESTIONS
First, it is important that you realize that any online health services and health information is not intended as a substitute for direct information from a trained medical professional, such as a physician, nurse or caregiver. You should always consult directly with a medical professional for diagnosis and treatment of any specific health problems or immediate health concerns. The information on our website is not medical advice!
We welcome your health-related comments or questions or general questions about our website and have provided e-mail contact opportunities for that purpose. We will share your comments and questions with our customer service personnel (often nurse staff, sometimes other clinical staff members) and those employees most capable of addressing your questions and concerns.
Please note that your e-mail, like most, if not all, non-encrypted Internet e-mail communications, may be accessed and viewed by other Internet users, without your knowledge and permission, while in transit to us. For that reason, to protect your privacy, please do not use e-mail to communicate information to us that you -consider confidential. If you wish, you may contact us instead via telephone at the numbers provided at various locations on our sites.
Beyond answering your question, website management personnel will periodically review questions (without patient identifiers or e-mail addresses) to determine if additional information should be placed on the web site that would benefit other patients.
HEALTHCARE CONTENT ON THIS SITE
The health care information provided on or accessed from this site has been authored by Iowa Health System and the staff members and physicians of its affiliates, with the exception of the health care information that has been authored by and purchased from third party vendors including, but not limited to, A.D.A.M., HealthDay, WebMD and HeartAware, who are responsible for security and quality of information licensed by them. Iowa Health System provides health care information for general knowledge and education and this content is not intended as a replacement for advice from your personal physician or direct caregivers.
INFORMATION SECURITY
We will use security procedures to protect personal information you submit to us from misuse or unauthorized disclosure. The personal information that you submit to us is stored in a secure database behind an electronic firewall. You can access your personal information only by using a password. We encourage you to change your password regularly and not to share it with anyone.
Access to the data is limited to a few computer technicians for our site who need to maintain the database and who also use passwords for that access, as well as outside vendors who may occasionally assist us in maintaining and improving our hardware and software tools.
Stewart Memorial Community Hospital will make every effort to safeguard your personal information. However, like other Internet sites, we cannot guarantee that it is completely secure from people who might attempt to evade security measures or intercept transmissions over the Internet.
OTHER INFORMATION/”COOKIES”
You should also be aware that when you visit our website, we collect certain information that does not identify you personally, but provides us with “usage data,” such as the number of visitors we receive or what pages are visited most often. This data helps us to analyze and improve the usefulness of the information we provide online. We do not collect information about your specific use on the site or track what you view
We use IP addresses to collect aggregate information about numbers of visitors and site usage. An Internet Protocol (IP) address is a number that is automatically assigned to your computer by your Internet Service Provider (ISP) whenever you access the Internet. This number may be the same each time you access the Internet or it may change. The address is logged on our server when your computer requests information. However, to allow users to access our site anonymously, your IP address is not linked with personal information about you. (We reserve the right, however, to use IP addresses to identify any individuals who threaten our site, service or customers.)
As our website develops, we may also use what is known as “cookie” technology. A “cookie” is an element of data that a website can send to your browser when you link to that website. It is not a computer program and has no ability to read data residing on your computer or instruct it to perform any step or function. By assigning a unique data element to each visitor, the website is able to recognize repeat users, track usage patterns and better serve you when you return to that site. The cookie does not extract other personal information about you, such as your name or address. Most browsers provide a simple procedure that will enable you to control whether you want to receive cookies by notifying you when a website is about to deposit a cookie file.
LINKING TO OTHER SITES
From time to time our website may provide links to other websites, not owned or controlled by Stewart Memorial Community Hospital that we think might be useful or of interest to you. We cannot, however, be responsible for the privacy practices used by other website owners or the content or accuracy of those other websites. Links to various outside websites do not constitute or imply endorsement by Stewart Memorial Community Hospital of these websites, any products or services described on these sites, or of any other material contained in them.
Changes to This Statement Stewart Memorial Community Hospital may change this statement from time to time without notice. We plan to post notice on our home page for no less than a week if any significant changes occur. This privacy statement is not intended to and does not create any contractual or other legal rights in or on behalf of any party.