How We Protect Your Information.Your Information.

Who we are

The Hawes Health Group Ltd. ("Hawes Health", "we", "us") runs family medicine clinics in Ottawa, Ontario, the website haweshealth.com and the patient portal patient.haweshealth.com. Patients from Ontario and Quebec are welcome.

When our physicians, nurse practitioners and staff provide your care, your health information is protected by Ontario's Personal Health Information Protection Act, 2004 (PHIPA). We also follow Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and, for Quebec residents, Quebec's Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector.

What we collect

• Contact details: your name, email address, phone number, home address and date of birth, when you register, reserve a spot, contact us, or fill in one of our forms on Facebook or Instagram.
• Health information: your health history, visit notes, prescriptions, requisitions and results, and your messages with your care team. We collect only what we need to care for you.
• Your registration as you fill it in: our registration form saves what you type as you go (never your password), so we can help you finish if you stop part-way.
• Payment details: membership payments are handled by our payment processor, Stripe. We never see or store your full card number.
• Calls, texts, faxes and emails between you and our team, and your notification settings.
• How you use our website: the pages you visit, how long you stay, what you click, the website that sent you and the kind of device you use. Our own analytics links these to a random number, not to your name.

How we use it

• To provide, coordinate and record your care.
• To register you, reserve your spot and manage your membership and payments.
• To contact you by phone, text or email about your registration, appointments and reminders. You choose which notifications you get in your portal's Settings.
• To answer your questions and requests.
• To understand how our website and advertising work, and to improve them.
• To meet our legal and professional obligations.

We do not sell your personal information. We never use your health information for advertising.

Facebook, Instagram and advertising

If you send us a form from one of our ads on Facebook or Instagram, Meta passes us the name, email address and phone number you entered. We use them only to contact you about reserving your spot with Hawes Health.

Our website and the first page of our registration form use the Meta Pixel. It tells Meta which pages were visited and which steps of registration were completed, so we can measure our ads. It never receives your health information or what you type into our forms.

You can control the ads you see in your Facebook and Instagram ad settings, and block or clear cookies in your browser.

Who we share it with

• Your care team at Hawes Health: the physicians, nurse practitioners, pharmacists and staff involved in your care.
• Others involved in your care: the pharmacy you choose for your prescriptions, laboratories, and specialists we refer you to.
• Service providers who run parts of our services for us under contract, and only for that purpose: hosting and databases, payments (Stripe), email delivery, phone calls and texts, fax, the AI medical scribe some clinicians use, and website measurement and advertising (Meta).
• Anyone else only with your consent, or where the law requires or permits it.

Some service providers store or process information outside Ontario and Canada, including in the United States. While it is there, the laws of that country apply to it.

Some of our clinicians use a secure AI medical scribe to help write their visit notes. Your clinician reviews every note before it becomes part of your record, and you can ask them not to use it.

How we protect it

Information is encrypted as it travels between your device and our systems. Only the people who need your information for their work can see it, and staff sign in with their own accounts and verification codes. Our providers are bound by contract to protect it.

How long we keep it

We keep medical records for as long as Ontario's rules for physicians require: at least 10 years after the last entry, or 10 years after a patient turns 18, whichever is later. Contact details from people who do not become patients are kept only as long as we need them to follow up, and then deleted.

Your choices and rights

• See your records and ask us to correct them.
• Withdraw your consent, or ask us not to share certain information. The law may limit this, and we will explain any effect on your care.
• Change or turn off email and text notifications in your portal's Settings, or tell us to stop contacting you.
• Ask us to delete information we do not need to keep.

Deleting your information

To have your information deleted, including anything you sent us through a Facebook or Instagram form, email Contact@HawesHealth.com with the subject "Delete my information". Include your name and the email address or phone number you used. We will confirm your identity, delete everything we are not required by law to keep, and reply within 30 days.

Questions and complaints

Our Privacy Officer answers questions about this policy and requests about your information. Email Contact@HawesHealth.com or call +1 (437) 291-0362, Monday to Friday, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm ET.

If you are not satisfied with our answer, you can contact the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario (ipc.on.ca), the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (priv.gc.ca) or, in Quebec, the Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec (cai.gouv.qc.ca).

Changes to this policy

When we change this policy, we will post the new version here with a new effective date.