NOTICE OF PRIVACY PRACTICES

We respect our legal obligation to keep health information that identifies you private. We are required by law to give you notice of our privacy practices. This Notice describes how we protect your health information and what rights you have regarding it. We are also obligated by law to notify you if there is a breach involving your unsecured personal health information.

TREATMENT, PAYMENT, AND HEALTH CARE OPERATIONS

The most common reasons we use or disclose your health information are for treatment, payment, or health care operations.

Examples of how we use or disclose your information for treatment purposes include:

• Scheduling appointments for you

• Testing or examining your eyes

• Prescribing glasses, contact lenses, or eye medications and faxing prescriptions to a pharmacy

• Demonstrating low vision aids

• Referring you to another doctor or clinic for eye care or low vision services

• Obtaining copies of your health information from other professionals you may have seen before us

Examples of how we use or disclose your health information for payment purposes include:

• Asking about your health or vision care plans, or other sources of payment

• Preparing and sending bills or insurance claims

• Collecting unpaid amounts (either ourselves or through a collection agency or attorney)

Health care operations include administrative and managerial tasks necessary to run our office. Examples include:

• Financial or billing audits

• Internal quality assurance

• Personnel decisions

• Participation in managed care plans

• Legal defense

• Business planning

• Offsite storage of records

We routinely use your health information inside our office for these purposes without requiring special permission. If we need to disclose your health information outside of our office for these purposes, we will ask for your written authorization.

You have the right to pay for services out of pocket and request a restriction on the use of your health information for payment or health care operations related to those services. This applies only to services you have paid for out-of-pocket in full.

Certain uses and disclosures of your personal health information require a separate authorization. These include:

• Use or disclosure of protected health information for marketing purposes

• Disclosures that constitute a sale of protected health information

WEBSITE AND ONLINE INFORMATION

Our website is not directed at children under 13 years of age. We may collect personally identifiable information from users in a variety of ways, including through online forms used to request services or voluntarily provided information.

We may also collect data about how users interact with our website—for example, tracking the number of unique views or identifying the domains from which users originate. We may use "cookies" to help track how users navigate our website. A cookie is a small file that a web server can store on a user's computer to recognize them upon return visits.

Although not all information collected through the website is personally identifiable, it may be associated with personal information voluntarily provided by users. Our practice may use this information to contact users regarding services offered by our company, trusted affiliates, independent contractors, and business partners, as well as to enhance the user experience.

Our business associates are directly liable for complying with HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules and are subject to enforcement.

We may also use non-identifiable information collected through our website for research and analysis regarding the effectiveness of the website and our marketing, advertising, and sales efforts.

We will not disclose personally identifiable information collected from users to any outside person, organization, business, or agency without permission.
We will not use or disclose protected health information for marketing or fundraising purposes without prior written authorization.
We will not sell your protected health information.

We may disclose aggregate, anonymous data based on information collected from users to investors or potential partners. In the event of a sale of our business, information collected from users may be transferred to the new ownership.

Information maintained on our systems is protected using industry-standard security measures.