Privacy Policy

This notice explains how Premier Periodontics handles information collected through this website at https://premierperiogroup.com. It covers the contact and appointment request forms on the site, anything you write into them, and the ordinary technical records that our hosting creates each time a page is served.

It does not cover your clinical record. Once you are a patient, information about your periodontal condition, your treatment and payment for that treatment is Protected Health Information under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, known as HIPAA. That is governed by the practice’s Notice of Privacy Practices, a separate document described further down this page.

Where the two overlap, the stricter protection is the one that applies.

Two things, and nothing beyond them.

• What you type into a form. Usually your name, a phone number, an email address, which office you would like to be seen at, and whatever you choose to write in the message field. When a dental office sends a referral through the site, that also includes the referring practice’s own contact details.
• Standard server logs. Like almost every website, ours records 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.

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

There is no account to create and no login on this site.

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

• Contacting you about the consultation or appointment 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 record keeping duties that apply to a dental specialty 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 hand it to advertisers for their own purposes, and we do not use what you tell us through this website to target advertising at you.

This is the paragraph on the page that matters most, so it is given a section of its own.

A message sent through a form on this site travels over an encrypted connection to our hosting, and is then handled like ordinary business email. It is not an encrypted patient portal. It is not the right place for a medical history, a medication list, radiographs, a periodontal chart, or anything else you would consider private clinical information.

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

If you include health information in a web form anyway, we will treat it with the same care as the rest of your record once it reaches us. That does not change what the channel itself is.

Your clinical record is governed by a separate document, the Notice of Privacy Practices. It sets out how Protected Health Information may be used and disclosed, and the 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 ask for confidential communications.

That notice is given to you at your first visit and is available from the front desk at either office 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, serves its pages, and generates the server logs described above.
• An email and messaging provider, which carries form submissions from the site to the practice.
• An embedded map on the location pages, supplied by a third party mapping service. When a page carrying 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.

A provider acting on our behalf is permitted to use the information only to perform that service for us.

Beyond running the website, information is shared only where your care requires it or the law requires it: with your general or referring dentist while treatment is being coordinated, with another treating provider, or where a law, a court order or a public health obligation applies.

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

The embedded map described above is the exception worth naming, because it is served 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 practice records is limited to the 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 across the internet is completely secure. We would rather state that plainly than promise otherwise.

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

An enquiry that never becomes an appointment is kept only for as long as it is useful for following up, and is then deleted. Server logs are kept for a limited period for security and troubleshooting.

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

We treat children as patients. 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, call 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 sits outside that Act and is handled under those laws instead, which are generally the stronger of the two.

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

• Know what personal information has been collected about you, where it came from, why it was collected, 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 treated differently, or given worse service, for exercising any of these rights.

To make a request, call either office or use the contact page. You may also ask an authorised agent to make a request on your behalf. We will need to verify who you are before acting, and we will respond within the time the law allows. Bakersfield: (661) 425-0570. Valencia: (661) 425-0560.

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

There is no mailing list for this page, so check the date if you are relying on what it says.

Questions about this notice, or a request about your information, can go to either office. Bakersfield: (661) 425-0570, 1010 Calloway Drive, Suite 200B, Bakersfield, CA 93312. Valencia: (661) 425-0560, 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. Nobody will be treated differently for making a complaint.