Privacy & Confidentiality

Commitment to Privacy

To provide the best possible care requires us to collect and use personal health information. This information includes your date of birth, contact information, health history, family health history, details of your physical and mental health records, record of your visits, the care and support you received during those visits, results from tests and procedures. Pinecrest-Queensway Community Health Centre is committed to keeping your information safe and confidential. We follow the rules set out in the law regarding the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information.

To ensure the protection of your personal information, we have:

Privacy Policies in place
Appointed a Privacy Officer to answer your concerns or inquiries
Set up safeguards to ensure the proper handling of paper, electronic and verbal personal information

How We Work

PQCHC’s service providers work in teams to provide you with comprehensive care and services. Information required to provide you with the best care possible, may be shared among those directly involved.

With your consent, that may be expressed or implied depending on the specific information, we collect, use and disclose (meaning share) your health information to:

Treat and care for you with the people in your “Circle of Care” (these are the people involved in and/or responsible for your care e.g. pharmacists, specialists, dietician, etc.)
Plan, administer and manage our internal operations
Report to our funders and plan and improve services
Meet legal and regulatory requirements
Do ethics-approved research

Your Privacy Rights

You may access and request corrections to your personal health records.
You may withdraw your consent, which will begin on the day it is withdrawn.
Your withdrawal of consent may be subject to legal exceptions and may limit our abilities to provide services to you.

Access To Your Personal Health Information

The information in your records belongs to you but the physical/electronic record itself remains the property of the PQCHC. You are welcome to read or have a copy of your personal health records. To access your record, please request a Consent to Disclose or Exchange PHI form and return it to your service provider. An appointment will be made for you with your service provider to review the records.

Limits to Confidentiality

Pinecrest-Queensway may report information to third parties, without consent:

If we believe you are a danger to yourself or others
If we suspect that a child under the age of 16 is at risk
If our records are subpoenaed by the courts
If you are considered by law to be unable to make informed decisions about yourself
In cases of a reportable communicable disease that must be reported to a Public Health Agency
To determine or verify your eligibility to receive health care benefits
In cases of required reporting to the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board

Website Cookies and the Collection and Use of Information

PQCHC is committed to protecting the privacy of all visitors to our website and any others providing contact information. We are committed to being transparent and accountable about how we handle website user information.

What type of information do you collect?

We receive, collect and store information you enter on our website or provide us in any other way. In addition, we collect the Internet Protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet. We may use software tools to measure and collect session analytics information.

How do you collect information?

When you visit our website, we collect session information including page response times, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information, and methods used to browse away from the page.

Why do you collect such personal information?

We collect such non-personal and personal information for the following purposes:

To provide and operate services.
To provide users with ongoing customer assistance.

To create aggregated statistical data and other aggregated and/or inferred non-personal information, which we or our business partners may use to provide and improve our respective services.
To comply with applicable laws and regulations.

How do you store, use, share and disclose your site visitors' personal information?

Data may be stored through Wix.com’s data storage, databases and the general Wix.com applications. They store your data on secure servers behind a firewall.

How do you use cookies and other tracking tools?

Our website uses third-party services, such as Google Analytics, placing cookies through Wix's services. We use cookies for the following reasons:

To provide a great experience for visitors and clients.
To monitor and analyze the performance, operation and effectiveness of Wix's platform.
To ensure our platform is secure and safe to use.

We reserve the right to modify this privacy policy at any time, so please review it frequently. Changes and clarifications will take effect immediately upon their posting on the website.

Questions or Concerns

If at any time you have questions or concerns about the treatment of your personal health information, or the protection of your privacy within the Pinecrest-Queensway Community Health Centre, please do not hesitate to raise your concerns with your service provider, or the Pinecrest-Queensway Community Health Centre’s Privacy Officer (the Chief Executive Officer).

You may also contact the Information/Privacy Commissioner of Ontario at 1-800-387-0073 or e-mail info@ipc.on.ca; web: www.ipc.on.ca.

Statement of Client Rights and Responsibilities