This site respects the importance of the privacy of personal information from our members. We are committed to honoring your privacy. This document is our privacy policy for our Web site, and it describes what information we may collect about you, what uses we may make of it, how you can tell us what to do with your information, and what precautions we take against unauthorized access or use of your information.

Medical Malpractice Defense (www.medicalmalpracticedefense.net) is our Web site for physicians and allied health care professionals. It is also open to non-professionals as well.

This privacy policy only applies to the Medical Malpractice Defense web sites. You should read the privacy policy at each other Web site that you visit after you leave our sites. We are not responsible for how other Web sites treat your privacy, once you leave a Medical Malpractice Defense site.

Privacy Policy Changes
As the privacy policies change in significant ways, we will post them here. Minor changes will not affect our use of individually identifiable information. When the privacy policies change in a way that significantly affects the handling of personal information, we will not use the information we have previously gathered without obtaining consent from the appropriate individual. Privacy policy change will be posted on the web sites in a timely manner.

Information Collected from Unregistered Visitors
Visitors to our Web sites can access the Web site's home page, and browse some areas of the site, without disclosing any personally identifiable information. We do track information provided to us by your browser, including the Web site you came from (known as the "referring URL"), the type of browser you use, the time and date of access, and other information that does not personally identify you.

Information We Collect When You Register
Those registering for membership are asked to provide us with identifying information, such as name, gender, contact information, and other identifying information. On our registration screen, we clearly label which information is required for registration, and which information is optional and may be given at your discretion. You have a choice about whether or not you want to receive newsletter information. We ask for your consent before collecting personally identifiable information.

Information from Outside Sources
We may also collect information about physicians or other healthcare professionals who register on our Web sites from other sources in order to verify their licensure status and identity. In some cases we may ask customers for information after they register, such as credit card information. Where necessary (for example, to process an order for a purchase), our Web sites may contact financial or credit organizations to confirm customer credit cards

Other Information
Forums: When you are using a forum on our Web sites, you are posting a message and your user name, which is available for all registered users to see. We suggest you use a user name that does not identify you. When you are posting the other members of that level or the level above on the web site can see your message. You should not post any information you want to keep private to a discussion board or other public forum on our Web sites.
 
Additional Forms and Emails: We may also ask you to provide additional information after you register if you want to obtain additional services or information or to resolve complaints or concerns.
 
In addition, we gather information about you that is automatically collected by our Web server, such as your IP address and domain name. Medical Malpractice Defense will use this information to personalize its offerings and presentations to you, facilitate your movements throughout our Web sites, provide personalized services, and to communicate with you individually.

Medical Malpractice Defense Editorial and Customer Support Staff will have internal access to files containing personally identifiable information, including evaluation forms. These files can be accessed in order to respond to your questions or comments. Our staff may also use personally identifiable information, including registration information and evaluation data,and in assessing educational needs and planning marketing activities.
 
We may use the information we collect as otherwise permitted in this Privacy Policy.

Use of Cookies
Cookies are a technology used by the Medical Malpractice Defense sites to identify a user as the user moves through the Web site. Your browser allows us to place some information on your computer's hard drive that identifies the computer you are using. We use cookies to personalize our Web sites and to track your usage across all of our Web sites.

Your Web browser can be set to allow you to control whether you will accept cookies, reject cookies, or to notify you each time a cookie is sent to you. If your browser is set to reject cookies, Web sites that are cookie enabled will not recognize you when you return to the Web site, and some Web site functionality may be lost. The Help section of your browser will tell you how to prevent your browser from accepting cookies.

Although cookies do not normally contain personally identifiable information, if you are a registered user we may associate your registration information with cookies our Web site places on your computer's hard drive. Associating a cookie with your registration data allows us to offer increased personalization and functionality. For example, you can elect to have our Web sites "remember" your user name and password and bypass the sign-in process on each visit to the site. Without cookies, this functionality would not be possible.Some of our business partners may use cookies on our site (for example, advertisers.) We have told them that we do not want them to use cookie information to track our customer's activities once they leave our sites. However, because of the way advertisements are served on our Web sites, we do not have total control over how advertisers use cookies on our Web site. If you become aware that a Medical Malpractice Defense advertiser is placing an unwanted cookie on your hard drive, please contact privacy officer to assist us in resolving the problem.

Children's Privacy
Medical Malpractice Defense sites are designed and intended for use by adults, and are not intended for, nor designed to be used by children under the age of 18. Minors under the age of 18 may not register for our Web sites.

Uses We Make of Information

Aggregate Data
We create aggregate data about visitors to our Web sites for product development and improvement activities. We also use it for market analysis. We may provide information from our Web sites in aggregate form, with identifying information removed, to third parties. For example, we may tell a health care partner what percentage of our registered users reside in a particular geographical area. When aggregated health information is provided, we pool it from many individual records and strip it of any data that could be used to identify an individual before it is used. Any third party that receives aggregated health care data must agree not to attempt to re-identify the people it belongs to. For example, we may provide information to a potential advertiser of a product that would appeal to a diabetes patient about what percentage of our users have diabetes. Depending on our agreement with the third parties, we may or may not charge for this information.
 
Marketing and Advertising
We may target our advertising or marketing depending on information we have about you. For example, a user we know is a woman may receive advertising for products targeted at women that a male user will not see, or a user that we know is a healthcare professional who treats diabetes may receive advertising for new diabetes therapies (although in neither case will the advertiser have access to any individually identifiable information about you).

We may also personalize our Web site based on your interests. For example, you may see different articles in different places on our Web site based on information you have shared with us, or information we have gained by observing your previous behavior, or information we may have gained from your interactions with a third party that shares information with us.
We use information for our own internal marketing, research, and related purposes.

Third Parties
In addition to aggregate information (discussed previously), we may share some kinds of information with third parties as described below.

Promotional Offers: Sometimes we send offers to selected groups of customers on behalf of other businesses. When we do this, we do not give that business your name and address. We provide a variety of mechanisms for you to tell us you do not want to receive such promotional offers. For example, we may provide an opt-in box for consumers to receive an email from another business, and we make clear that by opting in you are submitting your data to a third party.
 
Legal Requirements: We may release account and other personal information when we believe release is required to comply with law. We may release personal health information, including information from a medical record,if, in our judgment after review by an attorney, the release is compelled by law or regulation, or if the release is necessary to prevent the death or serious injury of an individual.
 
When we share information with third parties, we ask that they agree in writing to abide by Medical Malpractice Defense's privacy policies.

If we discover that a third party inadvertently disclosed personal information about any of our customers, we will take immediate action to prevent further occurrences.

Other than the cases described above, Medical Malpractice Defense will not release personally identifiable information to a third party without the customer's consent. Also, if we ask your consent to release personal healthcare information to a third party, we will use our best efforts to clearly define and limit the scope of your consent.

Protection of Information
General Policies
Our technology and security policies, rules and other measures protect the personal data that we have under our control from unauthorized access, improper use, alteration, unlawful or accidental destruction, and accidental loss. We also protect your information by requiring that all our employees and others who have access to or are associated with the processing of your data respect your confidentiality.

Medical Malpractice Defense uses security methods to determine the identity of its registered users, so that appropriate rights and restrictions can be enforced for that user. Reliable verification of user identity is called authentication. Medical Malpractice Defense uses both passwords and usernames to authenticate users. Users are responsible for maintaining their own passwords.

Storage of Health Information
Personally identifiable health information you share with us is stored on our database servers at Medical Malpractice Defense data centers hosted who observe our Privacy Policy. We have a firewall to prevent individuals from accessing information without authorization. Access to the servers requires individual authorization and authentication.

Information in our data centers is backed up routinely, in order to aid in the recovery of information in the event of accidental damage of information or due to a natural disaster. The backup media is stored in a physically secure storage facility.

Access to Information and Choices
This discusses how to obtain and correct information we have about you, or choose what types of information you may share with us.
 
Medical Malpractice Defense employees are required to keep customer information private, as a condition of their employment with the company. Only selected, authorized Medical Malpractice Defense employees are permitted to access your health information.

Employees are required to attend a confidentiality/privacy training class, and to sign a confidentiality agreement. All employees and contractors must abide by our privacy policy,

and those who violate that policy are subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination of their employment and legal action.

Privacy Questions or Concerns
For privacy questions or concerns about Medical Malpractice Defense sites, please contact admin@mddef.net.

Revision date: This policy was last updated on December 1 , 2003