Privacy Policy

This notice explains how OAKS Oral Surgery handles information collected through this website, at https://oaksoralsurgery.com. It covers the contact and appointment request forms on the site, messages you send us through them, and the ordinary technical records our website hosting creates when a page is served.

It does not cover your clinical record. Once you are a patient, information about your health, your treatment and payment for that treatment is Protected Health Information under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, known as HIPAA, and is governed by the practice's Notice of Privacy Practices. That is a separate document, described in section 04.

Where the two overlap, the stricter protection applies.

Two things, and nothing else.

• What you type into a form. Typically your name, a phone number, an email address, the location you would like to be seen at, and whatever you choose to write in the message field. If a dental office submits a referral, that includes the referring practice's own contact details.
• Standard server logs. Like almost every website, ours records the address of the page requested, the date and time, the browser and device type, the approximate region the request came from, and the referring page. These records exist so the site can be kept running and reasonably secure.

We do not ask for a social security number, a payment card number, an insurance member number or a driver's license through this website, and you should not send any of them to us through it.

We do not require you to create an account, and this site has no login.

Information you send through a form is used to reply to you and to arrange care. In practice that means:

• Contacting you about the appointment or consultation you asked for.
• Answering the question you asked.
• Handling a referral, and speaking with the dental office that sent it.
• Preparing for your visit, and adding what is clinically relevant to your record once you become a patient.
• Meeting the legal and professional record keeping duties that apply to a surgical practice in California.

Server logs are used to keep the site available, to diagnose faults and to identify abuse such as automated form spam.

We do not sell personal information. We do not share it with advertisers for their own purposes, and we do not use what you tell us through this website to target advertising to you.

This is the most important paragraph on the page, so it gets its own section.

A message sent through a web form travels over an encrypted connection to our hosting provider, but it is then handled like ordinary business email. It is not an encrypted patient portal, and it is not an appropriate place for a detailed medical history, imaging, test results, or anything else you would consider private clinical information.

Send us enough to book you in or to tell us why you need to be seen. Save the detail for the consultation or for a phone call. If you need to get clinical information to us before a visit, call the office and we will tell you how to send it.

If you choose to include health information in a website form anyway, we will treat it with the same care as the rest of your record once it reaches us. That does not change the fact that the channel itself is not designed for it.

Your clinical record is governed by a separate document, the Notice of Privacy Practices. It sets out in detail how Protected Health Information may be used and disclosed, and the specific rights you hold over it, including the right to inspect and copy your record, to request an amendment, to request an accounting of disclosures, and to request confidential communications.

That notice is provided to you at your first visit and is available from the front desk on request. It, and not this page, is the document that governs your health information.

A small number of outside services are involved in delivering this site to you:

• A website hosting and content delivery provider, which stores the site's files and serves its pages, and which generates the server logs described in section 02.
• An email and messaging provider, which carries form submissions to the practice.
• An embedded map on the location pages, supplied by a third party mapping service. When a page containing that map loads, your browser contacts that service directly, and it may set its own cookies and receive your IP address under its own privacy policy rather than ours.

Providers acting on our behalf are permitted to use the information only to perform that service for us.

Beyond the operation of the website, we share information only where it is necessary to your care or required of us: with your referring or general dentist as part of coordinating treatment, with another treating provider, or where a law, a court order or a public health obligation requires it.

This site sets only what it needs to function. It does not run advertising cookies, and it does not build an advertising profile of you.

The embedded map described in section 06 is the exception worth naming, because it is provided by a third party which may set cookies of its own when the map loads.

Every current browser lets you block or delete cookies from its settings, and lets you send a Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal. Blocking cookies will not stop this site working.

This website is served over an encrypted connection. Access to the practice's records is limited to staff who need it, and the practice maintains the administrative, physical and technical safeguards that federal and California law require of it.

No website and no method of sending information over the internet is completely secure. We would rather say that plainly than promise otherwise.

Clinical records are retained for the period required by California law and by professional standards, which is measured in years from the last date of treatment and is longer again for a patient who was a minor.

Enquiries that never become appointments are kept only for as long as they are useful for following up, and are then deleted. Server logs are kept for a limited period for security and troubleshooting.

If you want to know exactly how long a particular record is held, ask the office and we will tell you.

We treat children as patients, and in that setting the information comes from a parent or guardian and forms part of the child's clinical record.

This website is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect information online from a child under 13 without a parent or guardian involved. If you believe a child has sent us information through this site, contact the office and we will remove it.

If you live in California, the California Consumer Privacy Act as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act gives you rights over personal information a business holds about you. Medical information already governed by HIPAA and by California's Confidentiality of Medical Information Act is excluded from that Act and is handled under those laws instead, which are generally stronger.

For the website information this notice covers, you have the right to:

• Know what personal information we have collected about you, where it came from, why we collected it, and who it has been disclosed to.
• Receive a copy of that information in a portable form.
• Correct personal information that is inaccurate.
• Delete personal information, except where we are required to keep it.
• Limit the use of sensitive personal information.
• Opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information. We do not sell or share personal information, so there is nothing to opt out of, but the right stands.
• Not be discriminated against, or given worse service, for exercising any of these rights.

To make a request, call either office or use the contact page. You can also ask an authorised agent to make a request for you. We will need to verify who you are before we act, and we will respond within the time the law allows. Bakersfield: (661) 246-3750. Valencia: (661) 383-2550.

If this notice changes, the revised version is posted on this page and the last updated date at the top changes with it. A change that materially affects how we handle your information will also be raised with patients at the practice.

There is no mailing list for this page, so it is worth checking the date if you are relying on it.

Questions about this notice, or a request about your information, can go to either office. Bakersfield: (661) 246-3750, 1010 Calloway Drive, Suite 200B, Bakersfield, CA 93312. Valencia: (661) 383-2550, 23501 Cinema Drive, Suite 207, Valencia, CA 91355.

If you believe your privacy rights have been violated, raise it with us first and we will look into it. You also have the right to complain to the United States Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights, and to the California Attorney General. We will not retaliate against you for making a complaint.