NewM Clinic is aware of the importance of protecting your privacy and is committed to appropriately handling and safeguarding your personal information (which includes your personal health information). We will collect, use, store and disclose your personal information responsibly, and only as required to provide our services.
We remain responsible and accountable to you for the personal information we collect and hold. To this end, we have developed this Privacy Policy, trained our professional, technical and support staff and contractors about our policies and practices, and have also appointed a Chief Privacy Officer and Regional Privacy Officers to ensure our Privacy Policy is complied with throughout our entire company across Canada.
Personal information is any information that identifies you, or by which your identity could be deduced and includes any health-related information, including any information about your health care, health status or health care providers.
Business information, however (for example, your business title or business address and business telephone number) is not considered to be personal information according to privacy legislation.
Generally speaking, if we do not collect and use your personal information, we cannot provide you with our services. We will use your personal information only for the purposes for which it is collected.
We will only collect your personal information for the following purposes:
If you are a user of NewM Clinic, then we collect, use and disclose personal information as part of these services for the following purposes:
We may also use information related to your usage of NewM Clinic, on an anonymized basis, for the purpose of measuring adoption.
Your e-mail address will only be used to send important service messages; such as username and password recovery, notifications about availability of your lab report, changes to your laboratory test results since you last viewed them and information about new functionality or changes to services and policies.
You are responsible for protecting your User ID and password and any actions taken with them. Do not share your User ID and password with anyone. For your protection, NewM Clinic may require a change of your password periodically. If you suspect that your password has been compromised, for any reason, you should change it immediately. Select a password that is meaningful to you but not obvious or easy to guess; such as your birth date, phone number, social insurance number or similar information about your family. Do not write down your User ID and password, store it in a file on your computer or permit anyone to observe you entering your User ID and password. You can change your User ID/email address and/or your password at any time.
We will collect, use and disclose your Personal Information only on the basis of your consent, except where otherwise required or permitted by applicable laws. You may provide your consent to us either orally or in writing. By providing your personal information to us, you agree that we may use it for these purposes outlined above only.
You may withdraw your consent (which must be in writing) so as to prevent the disclosure of some or all of your personal health information to third party practitioners that would otherwise be entitled to receive your personal information for health care purposes. In such instances, if the information that is withheld is significant to your health care, then we are obligated to inform the requesting practitioner of the existence of such information, without actually disclosing the information itself.
We will limit the collection of personal information to those purposes identified in this Policy. Similarly, your personal information will not be used or disclosed for purposes other than those for which the information is collected or as required, or permitted, by law.
We will retain your personal information for the periods prescribed by applicable rules and guidelines. These vary depending on the type of tests that we perform for you. After the expiry of these periods we will destroy, erase or make anonymous your personal information in NewM Clinic’s laboratory information system.
We destroy our records (which include electronic records and hardware) in a way that protects your privacy. With respect to electronic records, at a minimum, we ensure that all information is wiped clean prior to disposal of electronic data storage devices. Paper based records are destroyed using methods that include supervised incineration or shredding and/or bonded contractors who must adhere to contractual privacy obligations.
We will use our best efforts to ensure that your personal information is as accurate, complete and up-to-date as possible for the purposes that it is to be used.
We take all reasonable precautions to ensure that your personal information is protected from loss, theft, unauthorized access, modification, use, copying, disclosure or tampering. Your information is protected whether recorded on paper or electronically. We have safeguards in place to protect all personal information retained in our facilities, and during their disposal and destruction. Our safeguards include:
Our staff is also aware of the importance of maintaining the security and confidentiality of all personal information in our possession. We review and update our security measures on a regular basis.
We are sensitive to the privacy of your health information and this is reflected in how we communicate with each other, both you and others involved in your care. We protect personal health information regardless of its format.
Telephone: We will make an attempt to confirm your preferences for leaving phone messages. If this is not possible, then we will try to call you back at a time when you can answer or we will not identify ourselves as NewM Clinic Labs in the message unless we are reporting a critical result.
Fax: Our fax machines are located in a secure area and we use pre-programmed numbers to send transmissions. All transmissions are sent with a cover sheet that indicates the information is confidential. We take reasonable steps to ensure that heath information is received only by a secure fax machine.
E-mail: Any confidential information that we send via email over public or external networks will be encrypted. We employ a firewall and virus scanning software to mitigate against unauthorized modification, loss, access or disclosure.
Internet: Website users should be aware that requests submitted through our website should not be considered to be secure or a private method of communicating personal information. Additionally, NewM Clinic’s website may use “cookies” which are small files stored in your computer that identify users entering our website. These files allow us to direct you to your preferred subsections of our website and enable statistical analysis of how our website is used. Only aggregated data, no individual records, will be used for this analysis.
NewM Clinic provides patients with access to their test results through its NewM Clinic Portal. However, not all test results are available through NewM Clinic. Specifically, patients must contact their ordering physician to obtain the results of certain tests including those that are:
Patients with requests for access to information about who at NewM Clinic can access their information and who NewM Clinic shares their information with must be submitted in writing to the NewM Clinic Regional Privacy Officer who will then respond to this request.
NewM Clinic does not make corrections to test results, unless our Quality Assurance department deems such a correction is necessary. If you disagree with a NewM Clinic test result, you should ask your ordering physician to order a new test.
NewM Clinic will make corrections to your demographic information (e.g., name, address, phone number) if the information we have about you is not correct.
We take all privacy inquiries and complaints seriously. If you have a privacy inquiry or complaint about NewM Clinic or NewM Clinic, how we have responded to your access requests or how we manage your personal information in NewM Clinic or NewM Clinic, then please contact our Privacy Officer to make an inquiry or complaint.
If you feel that we have not answered your request, inquiry or complaint to your satisfaction, then we will inform you about complaint procedures to contact the relevant governmental authorities if you wish to lodge a privacy complaint about us.
It is our practice to review our policies and procedures from time to time and therefore we may amend our Privacy Policy in the future.
Should you have an access or correction request, or any questions about our information practices or complaints about our compliance with privacy legislation, then please email us at privacyofficer@NewM Clinic.ca.
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