Privacy Policy for www.wahealthcarecompare.com

The WA-APCD Lead Organization (LO) is committed to protecting individual privacy and securing personal information made available to us when you visit Washington HealthCareCompare (www.wahealthcarecompare.com: the site maintained by the LO) or visit our pages hosted by other sites (such as our official profile on the LO’s site). This Privacy Policy describes what information is made available to the LO and how that information is used and retained.

Information You Give Us

You can visit our website without revealing any personal information about yourself or telling us who you are. We do not collect personal information, such as your name, address, phone number, or email address, while you browse. If you choose to contact us with personal information through our website, we use that information to respond to your message and to help provide the information requested. We treat emails the same way we treat letters sent to the LO. We do not collect personal information for any purpose other than to respond to you. We only share information with another agency if your inquiry relates to that agency, or as otherwise required by law. Moreover, we do not create individual profiles with your personal information or provide it to any private or commercial organizations.

Information Automatically Collected

When you visit www.wahealthcarecompare.com, the following basic information is automatically received and stored by the web servers hosting wahealthcarecompare.com:

• The originating Internet Protocol (IP) address and internet domain name;

• Information about your computer or mobile device (e.g., type and version of web browser, operating system, screen resolution, and connection speed);

• The pages on wahealthcarecompare.com that you visit;

• The internet address, or URL, of the website that connected you to our site, if you accessed wahealthcarecompare.com via a link on another page (i.e., “referral traffic”); and

• The amount of data transmitted from wahealthcarecompare.com to your computer.

We use this information to help us make our site more useful to visitors -- to learn about the number of visitors to our site and the types of technology our visitors use. We do not track or record information about individuals and their visits.

How Information is Used

If you choose to provide us with information, we may use that information to contact you, respond to your message, or provide you the information or services you requested. In order to serve you better, we may analyze multiple sources of data you have provided (for example, to look up whether you previously contacted the LO about the same topic so that we do not send you a duplicative response). We may also use messages or comments collected through wahealthcarecompare.com for our own purposes, such as to guide future public engagements and improve our websites.

The LO is required by law to post all data requests and final decisions on the WA-APCD web site. This includes posting requests for the release of protected health information or proprietary financial information, and the schedule for the receipt of public comment on the request. In these cases, commenters will be explicitly notified of future release of their input.

Retention

Electronically submitted information is maintained and destroyed according to the principles of the Federal Records Act and Freedom of Information Act and the regulations and records schedules approved by the National Archives and Records Administration.

Cookies

To better serve our visitors, we use technology commonly referred to as "cookies" to track new and returning visitor actions on wahealthcarecompare.com. They are used to track the way visitors use our site so we may continually improve the experience. These cookies do not capture personally identifiable information, such as your name or email, or track interactions outside of wahealthcarecompare.com.

The www.wahealthcarecompare.com site uses a third-party analytics provider (currently Google Analytics) to analyze data from cookies. The third-party analytics provider does not receive personally identifiable information through these cookies and is prohibited from combining, matching or cross-referencing wahealthcarecompare.com information with any other information. We have also limited the provider’s ability to see your full IP address (a process known as “IP masking”). Please review Google Analytics’ privacy policy  for additional information.

If you are concerned about the potential use of the information gathered from your computer by cookies, you can remove or block the use of web measurement and customization technologies by changing the setting of your browser to block cookies as described here.

Third-Party Websites

We may employ third party companies and individuals to facilitate our service, to provide the service on our behalf, to perform service-related activities or to assist us in analyzing how our service is used. wahealthcarecompare.com may maintain official pages or accounts on some third-party websites such as Facebook and Twitter in order to better engage with the American public. Your activity on those sites is governed by the third-party website’s security and privacy policies. Users of third-party sites often share information with the general public, user community, and/or the third-party operating the site and should review the privacy policies of those sites before using them. You should also adjust privacy settings on your account on any third-party site to match your preferences.

To improve the quality of our services, we may integrate measurement tools for basic analysis of activity on third party sites (such as likes and retweets) and do not collect personally identifiable information.

Links to External Sites

wahealthcarecompare.com may link to websites created and maintained by other public and/or private organizations and individuals. When you follow a link to an external site, you are leaving wahealthcarecompare.com and are subject to the external site‘s privacy and security policies. We also do not endorse the site’s sponsors, any views they express, or any products or services they offer.

Downloads

The LO cannot and does not guarantee or warrant that files available for downloading through wahealthcarecompare.com will be free of infection, viruses, worms, or other code that manifest contaminating or destructive qualities. You assume total responsibility and risk for your use of the site and the Internet.

Data Quality

All information submitted to wahealthcarecompare.com is transmitted via industry standard methods of data collection and transmittal. Our data storage devices are designed to accurately and safely store your data, thereby substantially minimizing the possibility of data corruption. If for any reason, you need to contact the LO for the purpose of correcting inaccurate data transmittal, contact us at apcd@hca.wa.gov.

Notification of Changes

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes to this privacy statement on our home page and other places we deem appropriate so our users are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it. We will use information in accordance with the privacy policy under which the information was collected.

Agreement

By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and to the use of the information we receive and collect as stated herein and in ways we may notify you of in the future. By providing any personal information to this site, you acknowledge that you fully understand and consent to the collection and processing of such information. We reserve the right at our discretion to modify this Privacy Policy at any time. Your continued use of this site following the posting of changes to these terms means you accept these changes.