Privacy
Privacy and your information
What the contact forms collect, where a submission goes, why this website is not a medical record, and what should never be sent through it.
Privacy
Do not send anything confidential through this website
This is the plainest way to say it. A web form is not a private channel, and this one is not built to carry sensitive material. Do not send clinical history, symptoms, medication details, records, case documents, allegations, names of other people involved in a matter, or anything else you would not want read by someone other than the intended recipient.
A short message is enough. Say that you are looking for therapy, or that you are an attorney with a matter to discuss, and give a way to reach you. The detail belongs in a phone call or in a channel set up for it after contact is made.
Collection
What the contact forms collect
The forms on this site collect only what you type into them. Nothing else on the page is a hidden field, and there is no account to create.
- Your name
- Your email address
- Your phone number
- The free-text message you write
Handling
Where a submission goes
When you submit a form, the contents are emailed to the practice and stored so that your inquiry can be read, answered, and followed up on. That is the entire purpose of collecting it.
Submissions are kept for as long as they are needed to respond to you and to keep an ordinary record of business correspondence. If you would like a submission deleted, ask, and it will be removed from the practice inbox and any stored copy.
Scope
This site is not a medical record and is not HIPAA-covered
This website is a marketing and information site for the practice. It is not a patient portal, not an electronic health record, and not a secure messaging system. Information submitted through this site is not part of a clinical record.
As a marketing site, it is not covered by HIPAA. Contacting the practice through this site does not make you a client, does not begin treatment, and does not create a forensic or expert-witness relationship. Those relationships begin only through a direct agreement with the practice.
Contact
Questions about your information
To ask what has been stored, to correct it, or to have it deleted, contact the practice directly at drmatthewbernard@gmail.com or (562) 826-1484.