Privacy Policy
Overview and Scope
Avenue MD Inc. and its related entities ("Avenue MD", "we", "our" or "us") recognize the importance of an individual's right to privacy and are committed to protecting the personal information that we collect, use and disclose in managing our business. We are providing a website, located at https://avenuemd.com/ (the "Website") and an interactive contact page, located at https://avenuemd.com/booking-contact/ (the "Contact Page"). This privacy policy ("Privacy Policy") outlines how we manage information and safeguard the privacy of the users of the Website (such users and the other individuals are, collectively and individually, "you" or "your").
The purpose of this Privacy Policy is to describe our privacy practices, including the types of personal information, including personal health information, we collect from you, why we collect it, how we use it, how we protect it and under what circumstances we share it with third parties. This Privacy Policy also describes your rights and the decisions you can make about your information.
This Privacy Policy provides specific information about how we, Avenue MD, handle your personal information and personal health information. Our employees and contracted employees are required to comply with this Privacy Policy.
For the purposes of this Privacy Policy:
(i) "personal information" means information about an identifiable individual, which includes information that can be used on its own or with other information to identify, contact or locate a single person; and
(ii) "personal health information" means information about an identifiable individual that relates to the physical or mental health of an individual, including information that consists of the health history of an individual's family; relates to the providing of healthcare to an individual, including the identification of a person as a provider of healthcare to an individual; relates to payments or eligibility for healthcare, or eligibility for coverage for healthcare, in respect of an individual; relates to the donation by an individual of any body part or bodily substance of an individual or is derived from the testing or examination of any such body part or bodily substance; an individual's health number; or that identifies an individual's substitute decision-maker. Personal health information may be found in medical records, treatment and examination notes (collectively, personal information and personal health information shall be referred to as "Information").
This Privacy Policy does not apply to personal information about Avenue MD’s employment candidates or Avenue MD’s employees or contracted staff, which is dealt with separately. If you apply to Avenue MD for a job, we will need to consider your personal information as part of our hiring process. Avenue MD normally retains personal information from candidates after a decision has been made, unless you ask us not to retain the information. If Avenue MD offers you a job, which you accept, the information will be retained in accordance with our privacy procedures for employee records.
Acceptance of Privacy Policy
We encourage everyone to read this Privacy Policy before providing us with any Information and before using our Website. By providing us with any Information or using our Website, you are signifying that you agree with all of the terms of this Privacy Policy.
We reserve the right to amend this Privacy Policy at any time by posting a revised version on our Website. We recommend that you check periodically in order to review our current Privacy Policy. You can tell if this Privacy Policy has changed by checking the effective date that appears at the top of this Privacy Policy. Depending on the circumstances, we may also decide to send you a notice electronically that the Privacy Policy was changed. If you continue to use the Website after this Privacy Policy has changed or notice of the change has been given, you will be deemed to have accepted such changes.
This Policy should be read in conjunction with our Terms of Use: https://avenuemd.com/terms-of-use /
What Information We Collect
Avenue MD collects your Information by lawful means and, wherever appropriate, directly from you. Wherever possible, we limit the amount of Information we collect, use or disclose to that necessary and appropriate to more efficiently operate our business.
Information we may collect about you includes:
Contact Information: When you insert information in the Avenue MD Contact Page, you voluntarily give us certain personal information, including your name, phone number(s), e-mail address which will only be used in accordance with the provisions of this Privacy Policy.
Questionnaires and Electronic Medical Record: If you are a patient, we collect information you submit to us if your healthcare professional asks you to complete questionnaires. At this time, our records record the following information: medication history, lab information, test results, immunization information, historical patient information and visit history.
Electronic Communications: If you sign up for e-mail, text, "SMS" or other electronic communications, we will collect and use the Information that you provide to us in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
Support Services: If you e-mail, fax, write to us or otherwise contact us, we will collect your name and contact information to be able to respond to your request.
Obtaining Consent
We obtain your consent before we collect, use or disclose your Information. Normally, we ask for your consent in writing, but in some circumstances, we may accept your oral consent. Sometimes, your consent may be implied through your conduct with us, such as by agreeing to applicable terms of use and/or by accessing our services.
Subject to our legal and contractual requirements and reasonable notice, you may refuse or withdraw your consent to certain of the identified purposes at any time by contacting Avenue MD's Privacy Officer (see end of this Privacy Policy for contact information). The period of reasonable notice will vary depending on the nature of the information and its purpose.
Your consent will be obtained before or at the time of collecting information. The purposes for the collection, use or disclosure of the information will be provided to you at the time of seeking consent. Once consent is obtained from you to use your Information, Avenue MD has your implied consent to collect or receive any supplementary information that is necessary to fulfill the same purposes.
If you provide Avenue MD or our service providers with Information of another individual, you represent and warrant that you have all necessary authority and/or have obtained all necessary consents from such person to enable us to collect, use and disclose such Information for the purposes set forth in this Privacy Policy.
There may be circumstances where you have provided Information for an identified purpose, and we later need to use that information for a different purpose. In such circumstances we will seek your consent to use the Information for the new purpose.
How We Collect Your Information
To confirm, we may use different methods to collect your Information, including:
- Through the Contact Page when you provide it to us;
- Automatically, through cookies and other automated data collection technologies or interactions, as you navigate through our Website and the Contact Page; and
- Through the partners that we work with and that you engage with while requesting products and services at Avenue MD.
How We Use Your Information
We may use the Information we collect about you in order to:
- Provide you with access to any healthcare professionals or other service providers, information, products, or services that you request on the Contact Page, including healthcare services;
- Provide treatment and care to our patients and ensure continuity of care;
- Communicate with you for the purposes you have separately indicated when you signed up to the Website or provided information through the Contact Page;
- To provide you with details about new products or services releases, new partnerships and other important information;
- For research studies and trials that a patient has enrolled in;
- Assist us with providing you with our services, and a positive and secure experience on the Website;
- For the management and administration of our business, and to address problems with, and to improve, our Website design, services, and offerings;
- For administrative purposes such as creating and maintaining medical and business records, billing, scheduling appointments, quality assurance and risk management;
- Identify and protect against fraud and other criminal activities;
- Carry out our obligations and enforce our rights arising from any contracts we may have with you or to comply with our legal, regulatory requirements and professional obligations;
- To contact a patient’s emergency contact in emergency situations;
- Fulfill the purposes for which you provided the Information or that were described when it was collected; and
- For any other purpose with your consent.
We may use personal information for other purposes with your consent or as permitted or required by law.
Sharing Your Information
We share the Information we collect about you with certain individuals that you connect and communicate with at Avenue MD (such as between a patient and healthcare professional, and/or staff working at Avenue MD to provide products and services you request).
Avenue MD discloses your Information only as described in this Privacy Policy, with your consent, or as otherwise permitted or required by law. Under certain circumstances, Avenue MD will disclose your Information, including:
- To those responsible for providing you with the services you request, including physicians, pharmacists, physiotherapists, psychologists, psychotherapists, nutritionists, chiropractors, nurses, counsellors, other regulated healthcare professionals and lab technicians;
- With our service providers, such as those we rely on to host our Website, video services and facilitate payment;
- With our financial, insurance, legal, accounting or other advisors that provide professional services to us;
- When necessary to comply with court orders, regulatory rules, or to satisfy Avenue MD's insurance requirements; and
- In connection with a business transaction involving Avenue MD.
All professionals that have a business relationship with Avenue MD are contractually obligated to keep Information confidential, use it only for the purposes for which we disclose it to them, and to process the Information with the same standards set out in this Privacy Policy.
Please note that there are circumstances where the use and/or disclosure of Information may be justified or permitted or where Avenue MD may or must disclose Information without your consent, in accordance with applicable law. For example, Avenue MD may disclose your Information to a government institution that has asserted its lawful authority to obtain the information or where Avenue MD has reasonable grounds to believe the information could be useful in the investigation of unlawful activity, or to comply with a subpoena or warrant or an order made by a court, person or body with jurisdiction to compel the production of information, or to comply with court rules regarding the production of records and information, or to protect Avenue MD's rights and property. Where obliged or permitted to disclose Information without consent, Avenue MD will not disclose more information than is required for the purpose that obligates or permits us to disclose such information.
Transfer of Your Information to Service Providers
When we may transfer your Information to a third-party to provide administrative and other services, we use appropriate measures to ensure that the third-party will only use your Information to perform the services we have specified and we require service providers to have appropriate safeguards in place to protect your Information. Avenue MD's business sometimes requires us to use administrative service providers who may be located in the United States of America or elsewhere outside of Canada. Accordingly, your Information may be transferred throughout Canada or outside of Canada and if so, it will be subject to the legal requirements of the applicable foreign jurisdictions, including local requirements to disclose Information to courts, law enforcement and national security authorities.
To the extent Avenue MD enters into arrangements with service providers, agents and contractors to store, handle or process Information on its behalf, such as for data processing, document storage software support and office services, Avenue MD's policy will be to require such parties by contractual or other means to provide comparable privacy protection while the Information is processed or handled by them.
Retention, Storage and Security of Your Information
We will retain your Information to the extent necessary for the purposes for which it was collected as described in this Privacy Policy, to comply with applicable laws, and for reasonable backup, archival, audit, or other similar purposes.
Your Information is stored in secured locations and on servers controlled by Avenue MD, located either at our facilities or at the facilities of our service providers. Avenue MD uses the standard safeguards applicable to our industry to protect the security of Information in our possession, including physical, organizational and technological measures. These measures include:
- Premises security;
- Restricted access to files that contain Information;
- Technological safeguards like security software and firewalls to prevent hacking or unauthorized computer access; and
- Internal password and security policies.
However, no method of transmitting or storing information is completely secure. While Avenue MD takes appropriate measures to protect your Information, there is always a risk that it may be lost, intercepted or misused. Avenue MD makes no warranty with respect to the integrity of any electronic communications between us and you or with respect to the security of any such communications and you consent to Avenue MD's exchange of electronic communications.
Your Decisions About Your Information
At any time you can contact us to stop receiving e-mails from us, review the Information held by us in connection with your account, withdraw your consent for our use and disclosure of your Information, request a list of third-parties to which Avenue MD may have provided your Information, and close your account.
Correction of Your Information
It is important that the Information we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your Information changes. You may also amend or request a correction of your Information that we control, subject to certain exceptions, such as if the request is made in bad faith. If you want to review, verify, or correct your Information, you can send an email to our Privacy Officer at alex@drmotakis.com. We may not accommodate a request to change Information if we believe the change would violate any law or legal requirement or cause the information to be incorrect.
Access to Your Information
By law you have the right to request access to the Information that we hold about you. If you want to access your Information you may send an email to our Privacy Officer at alex@drmotakis.com. Applicable law may allow or require us to refuse to provide you with access to some or all of the Information that we hold about you, or that we may have destroyed in accordance with our record retention obligations and practices. If we cannot provide you with access to your Information, we will inform you of the reasons why, subject to any legal or regulatory restrictions. Some examples of exemptions to providing access to Information include:
- Information protected by a legal privilege.
- Information that could reasonably be expected to result in serious bodily harm or a risk of serious harm to the treatment or recovery of the individual.
- Information collected in the course of an inspection, investigation or similar procedure and the resulting proceedings, appeals or processes have not been concluded.
- Information prohibited by law to disclose.
To be clear, you will need to speak with your healthcare professional or provider if you would like access to any records, notes or other Information that is collected by them in the course of receiving their services. You can always unsubscribe from receiving promotional e-mails from us by simply clicking the 'unsubscribe' link provided at the bottom of every promotional e-mail from us.
If you contact us to do any of the things listed above (such as to correct or access your Information), we may require you to provide sufficient personal information to allow us to identify you and tell you about the existence, use and disclosure of your Information and this personal information will only be used for this purpose. If you are not able to provide proof of your identity, we reserve the right to refuse to send you any Information. If you contact us about your Information, we will respond to your request within a reasonable time and at no cost to you.
Generally, you may withdraw at any time your consent for us to use and disclose your Information in accordance with this Privacy Policy, subject to legal or contractual restrictions and reasonable notice. As such, we may continue to use your Information as may be required to provide you with requested services, and to the extent that we are contractually obligated to do so or as necessary to enforce any contractual obligations you may have with us. If you refuse to provide us with the information we require or later contact us to withdraw your consent to use and disclose this information, we may no longer be able to provide you with the functionality offered by our Website.
Use of Cookies
We use browser tracking cookies (or "cookies"), which are small text files that are placed on the hard disk of a computer by a website. Cookies are uniquely assigned to you, and can only be read by a website or web server that issued the cookie to you. Types of cookies we may use include:
Strictly necessary cookies. These are cookies that are required for the operation of our Website and Contact Page. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to send email messages to Avenue MD for information and services. This category of cookies cannot be disabled.
Flash Cookies. Certain features of our Website may use local stored objects (or Flash cookies) to collect and store information about your location and navigation to, from, and on our Website. Flash cookies are not managed by the same browser settings that are used for browser cookies. To learn how you can manage your Flash cookie settings, visit the Flash player settings page on Adobe's website.
Analytical cookies. These cookies allow us to recognize and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our Website when they are using it. You may refuse to accept these cookies by activating the appropriate setting on your browser. However, if you select this setting you may be unable to access certain parts of our Website or Contact Page. Unless you have adjusted your browser settings so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies when you direct your browser to our Website or Contact Page.
We also use browser 'log files' which record certain information when you visit a website, including your internet protocol (IP) address.
To improve your experience on our Website, we use cookies and logs files to: recognize you when you return to our Website; keep track of activity on our Website and remember what items you have clicked on or viewed; study how you navigate through our Website and which products you request in site searches so that we can improve the design, content and function of our Website; and customize the message, content and delivery of online banner advertisements and e-mails that reflect how you navigate to and through our Website based on your online behaviour. We call this "Browsing Data". We may hire third-party service providers to assist us in the collection and analysis of this Browsing Data collected through cookies, but none of your personal information is disclosed to these third-party service providers.
Links to Other Sites
Our sites may contain links to other websites that are not operated by us. Avenue MD is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such other websites, including websites operated by affiliated entities. We provide such links only as a convenience and the inclusion of a link on any of our sites does not imply endorsement of the linked to website by Avenue MD. Avenue MD recommends that users review the privacy policies of third-party websites arrived at from links on our sites before using those websites.
Our Website may contain links and interactive features with various social media platforms. If you already use these platforms, their cookies may be set on your device when using our Website.
Children's Online Privacy Protection
The Website and Contact Page are not intended for use by children under the age of 13. Avenue MD does not knowingly collect or use any Information from any children under the age of 13 through the Website, however, the Contact Page permits you to add Information regarding Dependents who may be under the age of 13.
If we become aware that, based on our Website tracking, we have unknowingly collected personal information from a child under the age of 13, we will make commercially reasonably efforts to delete such personal information from our database.
Questions or Concerns about this Privacy Statement
If you have any questions or comments or wish to make a complaint about this Privacy Policy, please feel free to contact us at alex@drmotakis.com, or by delivery in person, by courier or by mail to:
Avenue MD Inc. Attention: Privacy Officer
160 Avenue Road
Toronto, ON
M5R 2H8
If you need further assistance, please contact the Avenue MD Inc. either by writing to us at the above address or by telephone at 416-925-5775.
If you contact us about your personal information, we will respond to your request within a reasonable time and at no cost to you.
Complaint to the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario
You may also make a complaint in writing to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario on their website at https://www.ipc.on.ca/ or in writing to 2 Bloor Street, East, Suite 1400, Toronto, Ontario, M4W 1A8; telephone: 416-326-3333 or toll free 1-800-387-0073.
© Avenue MD Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
