Privacy Policy

Introduction

Rady Children’s Hospital and Health Center, San Diego (the “Hospital”) has created this Privacy Policy in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to privacy and to disclose our practices in gathering, using and disclosing personal information in connection with this Web site (the “Site”). “Personal information” is information about a person that includes identifying information about that person. Although there are links from this Site to other Web sites, this Privacy Policy applies only to this Site and not to Web sites operated by others. For example, if you “click” on a link to the Web site of one of our sponsors, the “click” takes you out of our Site. We are not responsible for the content or privacy practices of other Web sites.

Openness

We follow a general policy of openness regarding our privacy practices. This Privacy Policy sets out the fair information practices that govern the collection, maintenance, use and disclosure of personal information regarding visitors who use this Site.

Revisions to the Privacy Policy

We may revise this Privacy Policy from time to time as we add new features or as laws change that may affect our services. If we make material changes to this Privacy Policy, we will post a new version number at the beginning of this Privacy Policy, consisting of the date (year, month and day) the Policy was last revised, so that you will be able to tell when the Privacy Policy was last changed.

Collection of Personal Information

Except as disclosed in this Policy, we do not collect personal information about visitors to this Site.

Web logs

We maintain standard Web logs that record data about all visitors who use this Site. These logs may contain:

  • The Internet domain from which you access this Site (e.g. aol.com, abc.org).
  • Your Internet Protocol (IP) address. Your computer is automatically assigned a number which acts as its IP address when you surf the Internet. Your IP address is either static (always stays the same) or dynamic (changes from time to time). A static IP address may be identifiable to you, while a dynamic address is usually not identifiable.
  • The type of browser and operating system you use.
  • The date and time you visited the Site.
  • The pages that you saw on this Site.
  • The address of the Web site you linked here from.

We use Web log information to help us design our Site, to identify popular features, and to make the Site more useful for visitors. Web logs are recorded in sequential files, and we do not normally try to identify individuals from Web logs or use Web logs to gather information about individuals. However, we may use Web logs to identify any person attempting to break into or damage our Site, and we may share Web log information with law enforcement agencies if we believe that we have evidence of a violation of computer security or related laws.

Internet Cookies

We may place Internet “cookies” on visitors’ computer hard drives. Internet cookies save data about individuals, such as their name, user-name and the pages they visit on our Site. When a visitor with one of our cookies on his or her computer revisits our Site, we are able to recognize that computer and tailor our Site to be more helpful and efficient for that visitor. Also, cookies help us to provide streamlined services, and to document our transactions with visitors to this Site. You may have software on your computer that will allow you to decline or deactivate Internet cookies, but if you do so, some features of this Site may not work properly for you.

Our site uses a third party service to match browser cookies to your mailing address. We then use another company to send special offers through the mail on our behalf. Our company never receives or stores any of this information and our third parties do not provide or sell this information to any other company or service. To opt-out of receiving our direct mail, you may send us an email at [email protected] or call us at 858-966-7878. We will honor those requests, but please understand that it may take 30 days for such mailings to end.

Visitor/Customer Requests for Information

If you ask a question or make a request through this Web site, we may store your message and our response for awhile. We may also use this information, and any information you give to us in response to a survey on the Site, to send you information about newsletters offered by the Hospital; promotional events and upcoming programs at the Hospital; notices of enhancements to our hospital services; additional surveys; and to send you an e-mail version of our physician directory.

Choice/Opt-Out

At the point where we request information about you as a visitor, our site provides users with the opportunity to opt-out of receiving communications with us. If you are requesting an appointment online, purchasing gift shop items, or making a donation, we may need to contact you in order to expedite your request.

Access, Correction, Deletion and Data Integrity

Requests to access, correct or delete personal information may be submitted using our contact information from Section 9 of this Policy. Please note that we do not consider Web log information to be personal information. Also, we may not be able to delete or revise information about you that we have relied upon to provide services to you, or that we are legally required to maintain.

Use and Disclosure of Personal Information

We do not sell or rent personal information about visitors to this Site. We do not use or disclose personal information obtained through this Site except as expressly described in this Policy.

Uses

We use information obtained from weblogs, cookies and visitor requests for the purposes described in Section 3 of this Policy. We also use personal information obtained from this Site to respond to requests, improve our services, demonstrate the quality of our services to our auditors and government agencies that have oversight of the Hospital, and for the additional purposes described in subsection “b” below.

Disclosures

The Hospital may disclose personal information to any person performing audit, legal, operational or other services for the Hospital. Whenever possible, the Hospital will require any recipient of personal information for these purposes to agree in writing to use the information only for the purpose for which it was disclosed and to destroy or return it when no longer needed for that purpose.

We may disclose personal information when required to do so by a subpoena, court order, or search warrant. Except when deemed by the Hospital to be infeasible, the Hospital will notify the individual of a subpoena, court order or search warrant for the individual’s information, by e-mail using the e-mail address (if any) that the individual provided to the Hospital.

The Hospital may disclose personal information as it deems appropriate to protect the safety of an individual or for an investigation related to public safety or to report an activity that appears to be in violation of law.

The Hospital may disclose personal information to protect the security and reliability of this Web site and of the Hospital, and to take precautions against liability.

The Hospital may disclose personal information to any successor in interest (any company or organization that purchases or otherwise takes over the Hospital’s assets).

Public Forums

From time to time this Site may contain message boards and/or news groups (“Forums”). Please remember that any information disclosed in these areas becomes publicly available. You should exercise caution when deciding to disclose your personal information in these areas. The Hospital does not maintain or routinely monitor information posted on any message board or news group on our Site; however, it reserves the right to remove any postings that it deems inappropriate.

Security

The Hospital protects the personal information it has collected from this Site by using industry standard security precautions against loss and unauthorized access, destruction, use, modification or disclosure of that information. The Hospital complies with the security safeguards detailed in its computer security policies and procedures, and routinely monitors that compliance. When credit card information and other financial information is transmitted over the Internet we use industry standard, SSL (secure socket layer) encryption to protect that information.

Children

The Hospital does not intend to collect personal information from children under age 18. The Web Site’s services are directed at adults, and therefore this site is intended for use by adults only. No information should be submitted to or posted on this web site by users under 18.

Questions, Complaints or Requests to Change Information

If at any time you wish to contact us with a question or complaint or to exercise any of the rights set out in this Privacy Policy, or if you want to change any information collected by us, you may do so by contacting us by e-mail, telephone, fax, or U.S. Mail, using the information set out below:

3020 Children’s Way
Mail Code 5037
San Diego, CA 92123-4282
[email protected]
800-788-9029