Privacy policy

1. Introduction

We take your privacy very seriously. This privacy policy describes what we do, and what we don’t do, with the personal information that we collect using this web site.

We will uphold the following principles:

• User privacy and data protection are human rights
• We have a duty of care to the people whose data we hold
• We will never distribute, rent, sell or otherwise make public your personal information and data

2. Personal information

Personal information is information about you from which you can be identified, such as your name and contact details, and it may include sensitive information such as medical information. Physiotherapists at Keryn Cowell Physiotherapy Inc. may ask you for relevant personal information in order to provide you with the best advice and treatment possible.

By providing your information to us, or by using our website, you consent to the use of your data as described in this privacy notice.

3. Use of your personal information

We use your personal information to provide you with, and to improve and extend, our services to you. This includes the following:

• creating appointments and responding to your queries
• internal administration and record keeping
• responding to requests where we have a legal or regulatory obligation to do so
• supporting your medical treatment or care
• supporting your doctor or other healthcare professional
• checking the accuracy of your information, including auditing medical and billing information for medical scheme claims
• assessing the type and quality of care you have received and any concerns or complaints you raise, so that these can be properly investigated
• using your contact information to send you service-related information (only if you have agreed to this)

4. Confidential and medical information

Your confidential medical information will only be disclosed to those involved in your treatment or care, and with your permission, in accordance with South African law and guidelines from professional bodies

5. Information we may hold

The information we hold about you may include:

• basic details such as your name, address, contact details and next of kin information
• details provided by yourself by email, text or phone conversation
• information you provide with regards to client experience feedback and treatment outcomes
• information about complaints and/or incidents
• medical notes and record about your health and any treatment and care you have received or require
• other information we receive from health practitioners or other companies who have obtained your permission to share information about you

6. Security information

Should you choose to contact us using the contact form on our contact us page, none of the data that you supply will be stored by this website or passed to / be processed by any third-party data processors. Instead, the data will be collated into an email and sent to us over the simple mail transfer protocol (smtp). Our own smtp servers are protected by TSL (sometimes known as SSL) meaning that the email content is encrypted using sha-2, 256-bit cryptography before being sent across the internet. The email content is then decrypted by our local computers and devices. However, not all mail servers are secured in such a way. Therefore, we would suggest that you always consider email as an insecure medium and not include personal, confidential or otherwise sensitive information within an email. All transmission of personal information and other data is done at your own risk.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

7. Retention of your personal and medical information

We will keep your personal information and medical records for as long as is necessary and in accordance with South African law.

8. About our website’s server

Our website is hosted by Afrihost within a South African data centre located in Johannesburg. The Afrihost data centre is designed to meet the highest standards of security. All customer data and Afrihost system data are secured through a daily remote backup of all servers to a separate backup data centre. All traffic (transferral of files) between this website and your browser is encrypted and delivered over https.

9. Data breaches

We will report any unlawful data breach of this website’s database to any and all relevant persons and authorities within 72 hours of the breach if it is apparent that personal data stored in an identifiable manner has been stolen.

10. Updating our privacy policy

We will regularly review and update our privacy policy. Please make sure you check back on this page regularly to check for updates.