Privacy Policy and Disclaimer - Northwell Health

This privacy policy applies to www.northwell.edu and various other Northwell Health websites with unique domains, such as www.feinsteininstitute.org and thewell.northwell.edu.

Email communications—your choices

You always have the option to unsubscribe from any Northwell Health marketing communications emails by clicking on the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of marketing e-mails that you receive. In general, the clinical communications you receive from Northwell Health are a direct response to your inquiry and cannot be opted out.

Personal information you choose to submit

Submitting personal information (name, address, telephone number, email address, etc.) is voluntary and is not required to access information on our website. If you choose to provide Northwell Health with personal information — for example by completing a “Contact Us” form, requesting an appointment, signing up for an event, or completing a survey — we may use that information to respond to your message and/or help us get you the information or services you requested.

Information we collect passively

When you browse through our websites, we use a number of tools to gather and store information about your visit, including:

Google’s Universal Analytics: Northwell Health uses Google’s Universal Analytics (UA) software to gather and store information about your visit. However, this information cannot be used to identify you as an individual. It is only used in aggregate to help understand how well our site is meeting the needs of our users and how we can best improve its performance. The aggregate data is only available to our Digital Strategy team and select staff members who require access to perform their job duties. The basic information we collect includes:

The date and time of your visit to our website
The pages and documents you viewed on our website
The URL of the website you visited prior to ours
The type and version of your Web browser and operating system
Your location at the time of your visit, down to the city-level

The Google Analytics Privacy Policy is available at https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/.

Patient tools

Follow My Health Patient Portal
- We are pleased to offer FollowMyHealth™, a patient portal that allows you to conveniently manage your personal health information – anywhere, anytime.
Pay a bill
- It’s easy to pay your medical bill safely and securely through our website! For your convenience, we accept all major credit cards.
Get medical records
- Health Information Management Offices can help patients access copies of medical records.

DoubleClick: Northwell Health uses DoubleClick to understand the characteristics and demographics of the people who visit Northwell Health sites. Northwell Health staff only conducts analyses on the aggregated data from DoubleClick. No personally identifiable information is collected by DoubleClick from Northwell Health websites. The DoubleClick Privacy Policy is available at https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/.

You can opt-out of receiving DoubleClick advertising at https://support.google.com/ads/answer/2662922?hl=en.

Tools used to customize your experience

Some other tools used to customize your experience include:

AddThis: Northwell Health offers AddThis on its websites, giving users the option to bookmark and share Northwell Health website content on social media sites. Using AddThis on Northwell Health websites does not require registration or personally identifiable information. The AddThis Privacy policy is available at http://www.addthis.com/privacy.

Bit.ly: Northwell Health uses Bit.ly to shorten long URLs for use in email and social media messages. Bit.ly provides analytics on how many people clicked on the URLs distributed by Northwell Health. Bit.ly analytics do not provide any personally identifiable information about the visitors who click the shortened links. The Bit.ly Privacy Policy is available at http://bit.ly/pages/privacy.

Google AdWords: Northwell Health uses Google AdWords to provide online advertisement delivery and tracking. Northwell Health may employ tools provided by Google AdWords to support Display Advertising, including Remarketing, Google Display Network Impression Reporting, data collection via advertising cookies and anonymous identifiers, the DoubleClick Campaign Manager integration and/or Google Analytics Demographics and Interest Reporting. In general, this means that third-party vendors, including Google, may show Northwell Health ads on sites across the Internet based upon visits to Northwell Health websites. To implement these tools, Northwell Health and third-party vendors, including Google, use first-party cookies and third- party cookies together to inform, optimize, and serve ads based on past visits to Northwell Health websites. The Google AdWords Privacy Policy is available at https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/.

Google Analytics: Northwell Health may employ tools provided by Google Analytics to support Display Advertising, including Remarketing, Google Display Network Impression Reporting, data collection via advertising cookies and anonymous identifiers, the DoubleClick Campaign Manager integration and/or Google Analytics Demographics and Interest Reporting. In general, this means that third-party vendors, including Google, may show Northwell Health ads on sites across the Internet based upon visits to Northwell Health websites. To implement these tools, Northwell Health and third-party vendors, including Google, use first-party cookies and third- party cookies together to inform, optimize, and serve ads based on past visits to Northwell Health websites. The Google Analytics Privacy Policy is available at https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/.

YouTube Terms of Service: Northwell Health uses YouTube API Services. All users are agreeing to be bound by YouTube’s Terms of Service. To view YouTube’s Privacy Policy, click here.

Mobile App permissions

Based on your device or app permission settings, mobile apps may access information from the device with your permission. You will be able to grant or deny the permissions on your device, this may affect the usability of certain features within our app. The information we may access includes:

Location (may include accurate or approximate location)
Calendar (may be able to add an appointment to the calendar)
Files (may be able to add files to file storage)
Images (may be able to add images to file storage)
Additional information (Northwell Health app may be able to detect other information such as network connection, change audio and/or video settings for Telehealth visits)

Understanding cookies

Websites can automatically place small text files, known as “cookies,” on the computers of their visitors. So long as they do not expire or get deleted, cookies identify the unique browser used by the visitor. On each subsequent visit to the website, the visitor’s browser will retrieve the cookie, allowing us to aggregate the number of return visitors. Northwell Health uses “cookies” to test and optimize our website design and content. We use two types of cookies on our websites:

We use session cookies to gather data for technical purposes, such as improving navigation through our website and generating statistics about how the website is used. Session cookies are temporary text files that expire when you leave our website. When cookies expire, they are automatically deleted from your computer. We do not use session cookies to collect personal information, and we do not share data collected from session cookies.
We use multi-session cookies, or persistent cookies, to customize our website for frequent visitors and to test variations of website design and content. Multi-session cookies are cookies that are stored over more than a single session on your computer. We do not use multi-session cookies to collect personal information, and we do not share data collected from multi-session cookies. Our multi-session cookies are set to expire no more than two years after your last visit to our website. After two years, they are automatically deleted from your computer. Northwell Health is unable to identify an individual by using such technologies.

Blocking session cookies from your computer will not affect your access to the content and tools on our website. Blocking multi-session or persistent cookies may affect the personalization of the information on those sites.

Website security

We employ commercially reasonable measures to safeguard the collection, transmission and storage of the information we collect. These measures vary based on the sensitivity of the information that we collect, process and store and the current state of technology. We use software programs to monitor traffic to identify unauthorized attempts to upload or change information or other types of malicious use. Information collected from these sources may be used to help identify an individual in the event of a criminal investigation or as required by any legal process.

Visiting an official Northwell Health page on third-party websites

We maintain accounts on third-party websites, such as social media sites, as tools to better interact with the public. The security and privacy policies of third-party websites apply to your activity on those sites. Users of third-party websites often share information with the general public, user community, and/or the third-party operating the website. You should review the privacy policies of all websites before using them and ensure that you understand how your information may be used. You should also adjust privacy settings on your account on any third-party website to match your preferences.

Northwell Health Accounts

Common third-party website privacy policies used by Northwell Health include:

Information collected and used from third-party websites

If you have an account/profile with a third-party website, and choose to follow, like, friend, or comment on a third-party website managed by Northwell Health, certain personal information associated with your account may be made available to us based on the privacy policies of the third-party website and your privacy settings within that website. We do not share personally identifiable information made available through these websites.

Northwell Health conducts and publishes a Privacy Impact Assessment for each use of a third-party website. Each use of a third-party website may have unique features or practices. Northwell Health sometimes collects and uses the information made available through third-party websites. To learn more, review the published assessments.