Privacy

Privacy and HIPAA

What happens to information you enter on this website, and where to find the practice’s full Notice of Privacy Practices.


Read this first

Draft, not legal advice

Have this reviewed before launch. What follows is a plain-language starting point written by your web developer, not a lawyer. A HIPAA-covered practice needs its Notice of Privacy Practices and website privacy language reviewed by counsel or a compliance advisor before publication.

This website

What the site collects

This site does not set advertising cookies, run analytics scripts, or track you across other websites.

It collects information in two places, and neither is a secure channel or covered by a business associate agreement. That is why we ask you to keep symptoms, diagnoses, and medications out of both.

The contact form. What you type and choose to send.

The message panel in the corner of every page. Anything you send through it is stored so the conversation is still there when you come back, along with the name and contact details you choose to give. Your browser keeps a random key in its local storage so it can reopen your own conversation and nobody else’s — clearing your browser data loses access to it. We also keep a scrambled, one-way version of your IP address, used only to stop one person opening hundreds of conversations; it cannot be turned back into an address.

Messages sent through the panel are read by the team that maintains this website as well as the practice. If you would rather your question only reach the practice, call the office instead.

Web fonts on this site are loaded from Google Fonts, which means your browser makes a request to Google’s servers when a page loads. If you would rather the site made no third-party requests at all, the fonts can be self-hosted instead.

Your records

Protected health information

Information created once you become a patient — your record, your appointments, what you discuss in session — is protected health information and is handled under HIPAA and Illinois law, not under this website notice.

The practice’s Notice of Privacy Practices explains how that information may be used and disclosed, and what rights you have over it: to see your record, to request corrections, to ask for restrictions, and to receive an accounting of disclosures. You are given a copy at your first appointment.

[Link the current Notice of Privacy Practices PDF here, or state where a copy can be requested.]

Questions about privacy, or a concern about how your information was handled, go to the office at [(618) 555-0142].

Housekeeping

Changes to this page

We update this page when the site changes. The date below reflects the last revision.

Last updated: [Month DD, YYYY]

In crisis? This office is not a 24-hour service. If you are in immediate danger, call 911. For urgent mental health support any time, call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.