Privacy Policy

Date last updated: November 7, 2024

Who We Are

Our website address is: https://www.centralhealth.net (the “Website”).

The Website is administered by the Travis County Healthcare District, d/b/a Central Health (“Central Health”). Our address is 1111 East Cesar Chavez Street, Austin, TX 78702. Our phone number is 512-978-8000.

Website Notice

This Privacy Policy explains how Central Health collects, uses, discloses, and secures personal information through our Website. This Privacy Policy does not apply to other websites that may be operated by Central Health, such as https://mychart.centralhealth.net/ and https://ola.veritysource.com/austin.

Collection Of Information

We collect and process personal information for our internal and Website-related purposes, and in order to provide, improve, and enhance the services we offer.

Through the Website, including through the Contact Us form and other online forms, we collect personal information you may provide, including names, addresses, phone numbers, electronic mail addresses, and narrative responses made in response to questions posed to users of the Website.

We may send SMS/text communications to the phone number you provide, when permissible by law and with your consent, to communicate for permissible purposes, including as follows:

• to communicate about updates to terms or policies, to send reminders about scheduled appointments, to communicate details about the status of any application or membership status, to send information about changes to program coverage and services, to communicate concerning issues raised with our Customer Care team, or to send notice of security- or safety-related incidents or concerns;
• to send event notifications about the scheduling of events to appropriate individuals, including our employees, contractors and/or vendors or service providers; and
• to provide information for coordination of facility transfers.

Information you provide through the Website may be combined with information Central Health may have about your health or medical status that it possesses as a provider or payer of health services.  Such combined information shall be treated as “personal health information” and “protected health information” and handled in accordance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and other applicable laws and regulations.

Articles on the Website may include embedded content (e.g., videos, images, articles, etc.). If you interact with that embedded content, the third-party content provider may use cookies, third-party tracking or other tools, to review and/or record aspects of your interaction with the embedded content, especially to the extent you have an account with the third-party content provider. See the “Automated data collection: Cookies and similar technologies” section below for more information. This Privacy Policy does not apply to the practices of other websites, including third-party content provider websites and practices with respect to your interactions with third-party content providers.  As further addressed in our Cookie Policy (below), we use and/or permit the use of cookies and similar technologies (referred to herein simply as “cookies”) for certain purposes (described below) on our Website.

Information Sharing

We may share any of the categories of personal information listed above for our commercial and other business purposes as described below.

Affiliates. We may share personal information with our affiliates, and any successors thereto in the normal course of our business operations. We do so for business purposes, such as to communicate with you and to promote and provide our services. Such affiliates will only use your personal information in a manner that is consistent with this Privacy Policy.

Vendors and service providers. We share personal information with vendors and service providers that process such information to perform services for us in connection with the Website and our other business operations. We require that such vendors and services providers will only use your personal information in a manner that is consistent with this Privacy Policy.

Legal and similar disclosures. We may share personal information with law enforcement, the courts, our advisors, attorneys, and others who participate in legal processes or proceedings, if we believe doing so is required or appropriate to: comply with legal requirements and law enforcement requests (such as a court order or subpoena), comply with legal process (such as discovery), or protect your, our, or others’ rights, property, or safety.

Merger, sale, or other asset transfers. If we are involved in financing due diligence, reorganization, bankruptcy, sale of assets, or transition of service to another provider, your personal information may be shared with the other parties and advisors involved under an obligation of confidentiality in connection with the negotiation of such transaction, and your personal information may be transferred as part of such a transaction (subject to compliance with applicable laws).

Please note, if you provide your phone number and consent to receive SMS/text communications from us, we will do so in a manner that is consistent with your consent. We will not provide your phone number to a third party for such purposes without your separate, express consent or instruction that we do so. You can withdraw your consent and opt out of receiving SMS/text communications at any time by replying “STOP” to our messages or otherwise following the instructions included in the messages we send.

Information Security

We strive to process your information securely, in accordance with this Privacy Policy, and in accordance with information security requirements imposed by applicable law.  Although Central Health will endeavor to protect the information you may provide, note that certain aspects of Internet communications are inherently not completely secure.

Disclaimer

In addition to the other risks, the information provided on this Website shall not be construed to be medical advice or creating a patient-physician relationship. Similarly, nothing on this Website shall be construed to create a business associate relationship between You and Central Health and other Central Health vendor who may provide services in relation to this Website.

Public Information Notice

Central Health is subject to the requirements of the Texas Public Information Act, Government Code Chapter 552. To the extent we are required, we will respond to public records requests.

Links to Unaffiliated Third-Party Websites

The Website may contain links to unaffiliated third-party websites. This Privacy Policy does not apply to the practices of such other websites, and we are not responsible for the actions and privacy policies of the third parties that operate or interact with those websites.

No Use By Children

The Website is not intended for use by children. In particular, if you are under the age of 18, you may not use our Website. We do not knowingly collect, maintain, or use personal information from children under 18 years old. If we believe that any information has been posted by a child under the age of 18, we will promptly delete that information. Parents may contact us using the methods set forth below to request that information concerned their child be removed from our records.

Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or if you would like to make a suggestion about our privacy practices, please contact us using the contact details in the “Who We Are” section above.

Posting of a Revised Privacy Policy

We may make changes to this Privacy Policy from time to time, and the revised version will be effective when it is posted and will apply to personal information received after that date. If we make any material changes, we will provide notice of such changes on the Website or in any other pertinent location where this Privacy Policy may be posted for a reasonable period of time (which we estimate will be approximately two weeks). We encourage you to review this Privacy Policy periodically, especially if you don’t visit the Website regularly.

Cookie Policy

We use cookies and similar technologies (referred to herein simply as “cookies”) to facilitate and improve the performance and security of our Website and to enhance user experience.

The Website may utilize or permit several different categories of cookies, as follows:

• Essential cookies – These cookies are essential for the proper operation of the Website. For example, they may facilitate page navigation or assist with security checks.
• Functional cookies – These cookies allow us to remember your preferences (such as your username, language, or the region you are in) and allow us to make the Website experience better for you.
• Advertising cookies – These cookies are used to highlight articles, other content, or services that we (or in some cases a third party) believe will be of interest to you based to some extent on your use of the Website.
• Performance cookies – These cookies help us understand how our Website performs, how visitors interact with the Website, and whether there may be technical issues.

Use of cookies on our Website

Automated data collection: Cookies and similar technologies. When you visit our Website, we and our third-party partners, such as analytics providers (including Google Analytics), collect information by automated means.

We may use cookies and similar technologies to collect personal identifiers (such as your IP address), information about your device (such as your browser characteristics, device IDs and characteristics, and operating system version) and information concerning your usage of our Website (including the link you used to reach a given webpage). We use this information to determine how many users have visited particular webpages, viewed particular content, or opened messages or alerts, and we may also use such information to improve the performance of the Website, to improve our marketing activities, and to enforce our Website service terms and prevent malicious conduct.

As indicated above, we use Google Analytics to evaluate our Website traffic and to collect and process certain Website usage data. You can see how Google Analytics uses cookie information across various websites by visiting https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites, or any successor webpage that Google may provide. To learn more about Google Analytics and how to opt out, please visit https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

You may be able to change a web browser’s settings to block and delete certain cookies when you access a Website through the web browser. However, if you do that, the Website may not work properly; also, we will still receive basic information (such as last URL visited) when you navigate to the Website.

We may allow third parties to serve cookies to help identify fraudulent or automated traffic on the Website. In addition, third parties that provide content feeds may serve cookies. We may use third-party cookies to help us with market research, improving functionality, and enforcing Website terms and policies.

How to Disable Certain Cookies

Your browser may allow you to disable certain cookies. Note that disabling cookies may in some instances impact the functionality of the Website. Opt-out functionality for Google Analytics can be found here.

You may learn more about advertising networks and opt out of receiving personalized advertisements on this browser or device from advertisers who are members of the Network Advertising Initiative or who subscribe to the Digital Advertising Alliance’s Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising by visiting the opt-out options of each of those organizations. Links to their opt-out sites are set forth below.

Network Advertising Initiative: https://www.networkadvertising.org/choices

Digital Advertising Alliance: https://www.aboutads.info/choices

Note that, when you opt out of personalized advertising, you may continue to see online advertising on the Website and/or our ads on other websites and online services. Also, given that many opt-outs themselves use a cookie to effectuate an opt-out preference, you may need to opt-out again if you clear cookies on your browser.

Changes to this Cookie Policy

We may revise this Cookie Policy from time to time in order to reflect changes in our use of cookies, changes in the law, changes in our services, or best practices. We encourage you to review this Cookie Policy periodically.