Privacy Policy

Effective Date: January 1, 2023 | Last Reviewed: March 28, 2023

This website and mobile site are owned and operated by Empire Eye and Laser Center. In this Notice, the company is referred to as “EELC” (also “we”, “us”, or “our”). We at EELC respect your privacy and we work hard to protect the information you provide online. This Privacy Notice describes how we collect and use the personal information you provide. Additionally, it describes the choices available to you regarding our use of your information and how you can access and update your personal information.
EELC has other Privacy Notices that may apply to you. They provide more detail about how we may use and share your personal information in compliance with the law. Please review our HIPAA Privacy Notices.

Information Collection and Use

When you visit our website or mobile site, you may choose to share certain personal information with us, such as your name, address, date of birth, and/or other information that can be used to identify you. The collected information will be used to facilitate the provision of our services to you or your organization and with your consent, to provide you with relevant communications. Some portions of our website and/or mobile site may allow you to pay for products or services electronically. The credit card or other electronic payment information we collect will be used to process the payment.

Subscription Forms

If you submit a subscription form on our site you will be opting in for us to save your name, email address and other relevant information. These subscriptions are used to notify you about related content, discounts & other special offers. You can opt our or unsubscribe at any time in the future by clicking a link at the bottom of any email.

Reviews

We give patients the opportunity to review physicians and our services/operations. Please be aware that we may display those reviews on our site. You may provide a screen name to be displayed along with the review. Your comments and reviews are not personal information and can be viewed by others. To request removal or modification of your comment or review section, contact us at [email protected]. In some cases, we may not be able to remove your comment or review.

Surveys and Contests

EELC may provide you the opportunity to participate in surveys or contests when you visit our website. Participation in these surveys or contests is completely voluntary. If you choose to participate, we will request certain personal information from you. The requested information typically includes contact information (such as name and email address), and demographic information (such as zip code). We use this information to improve our services.

Information Supplementation

Any personal information that you provide through our website or via the mobile site may be combined with information we have legally collected from or about you. We may supplement the information that you submit to us online with other personal information that you submit to us offline, for example, from paperwork that you submit to us, or that we legally obtain about you from public and non-public sources.

Log Files

As is true of most websites and mobile site(s), we gather certain information automatically and store it in log files. This information may include internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, internet service provider (ISP), device identifier, referring/exit pages, operating system, date/time stamp, and/or clickstream data. The information is used to tailor and improve our services. We may combine this automatically collected log information with other information we collect about you. We do this to improve the services we offer you, to improve marketing, analytics, or site functionality.

Tracking Technologies

Technologies such as cookies, beacons, tags, and scripts are used by EELC and our partners (e.g., survey partners), affiliates, or analytics or service providers (e.g., online customer support providers, etc.). These technologies are used in analyzing trends, administering the site, tracking users’ movements around the site and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole. We may receive reports based on the use of these technologies by these companies on an individual as well as aggregated basis. You can manage your Flash cookies here.
We use cookies to remember users’ settings (e.g., language preference) and for authentication. We also use anonymous cookies to prevent users from seeing the same popup repetitively in an attempt to make our users experience more pleasant while still delivering time sensitive messaging. Users can control the use of cookies at the individual browser level. If you reject cookies, you may still use our site, but your ability to use some features or areas of our site may be limited.
We partner with a third party to manage our advertising on other sites. Our third-party partner may use technologies such as cookies to gather information about your activities on this site and other sites in order to provide you advertising based upon your browsing activities and interests. If you wish to not have this information used for the purpose of serving you interest-based ads, you may opt-out here.

Geo-location

When using certain functions via the mobile site, your location information may be used if your mobile device uses global positioning system (“GPS”) technology, trackers, or other location tools. If you allow your location information to be obtained, we will use this information solely to return your estimated location and to provide you with more localized results and/or services. EELC does not monitor your GPS tracking or location information, does not share the information with any third parties other than service providers, and does not save this information. You may restrict sharing of your location information through your device’s settings menu.

Information Sharing

We do not sell your personal information. Any personal information you provide on our website or mobile site will be used only in ways consistent with this and the HIPAA Privacy Notices, and in accordance with applicable laws and regulations. We share information to support our business operations and to provide services to you. In doing so, we share the information we collect about you with appropriate employees and with service providers who assist us with, for example, administering our products and services, billing and payments, recruiting employment applicants, conducting surveys, and/or maintaining and operating our website and mobile site. Please know that third-party service providers are authorized to use your personal information only as necessary to provide services to us.
Some of our pages utilize framing techniques to serve content from our partners while preserving the look and feel of our site. Please be aware that you are providing your personal information to these third parties and not to EELC.
EELC may also disclose your personal information in the following instances:

• As required by law, such as to comply with a subpoena or similar legal process
• When we believe in good faith that it is necessary to protect our rights, your safety, or the safety of others, investigate fraud, or respond to a government request
• If EELC is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of all or a portion of its assets, you will be notified via email and/or a prominent notice on our website of any change in ownership or uses of your personal information, as well as any choices you may have regarding your personal information
• EELC may share your information with any other third party if you grant us consent to do so

Security

EELC uses a variety of security measures to make sure your information is protected from improper access or use. For example, when collecting, using or transmitting sensitive electronic information, like your personal health information, we encrypt the transmission using Secure Sockets Layer (“SSL”) or other similar technology. We also maintain physically secured locations for server operations, use technological safeguards like firewalls and password protection, and limit access to sensitive information to those individuals with a legitimate business need to access it.
EELC follows generally accepted standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it. However, no method of transmission over the Internet or method of electronic storage is 100% secure. Therefore, we cannot guarantee its absolute security. If you have any questions about security on our website, you can contact us at 661-325-3937.

Link to Third Parties

To provide you with valuable information, our website and mobile site may have links to third party websites we do not own or control. A link does not mean we approve or endorse a site. We are not responsible for the quality, accuracy, security or privacy practices of sites we do not own. Be sure to read the privacy statement of each site you visit and contact the owners of those sites if you have questions about their information practices.

Social Media Widgets

Our website includes Social Media features, such as the Facebook Like button, and widgets, such as the Share This button or interactive mini-programs that run on our website. These features may collect your internet protocol address, which page you are visiting on our website, and may set a cookie to enable the feature to function properly. Social Media features and widgets are either hosted by a third party or hosted directly on our website. Your interactions with these features are governed by the privacy statement of the company providing it.

International Users

This Site and the services on this Site are targeted for users in the United States of America. Any information you enter on this Site may be transferred outside of the European Union to the United States of America which does not offer an equivalent level of protection to that required in the European Union. In particular, you are advised that the United States of America uses a sectoral model of privacy protection that relies on a mix of legislation, governmental regulation, and self-regulation. Article 26 of the European Union’s Data Protection Directive (Directive 95/46/EC, 1995 O.J. (L 281) 31) allows for transfer of personal data from the European Union to a third country if the individual has unambiguously given his consent to the transfer of personal information, regardless of the third country’s level of protection. By using this Site or the services, you consent to the transfer of all such information to the United States of America which may not offer an equivalent level of protection to that required in the European Union and to the processing of that information by the Company on its servers located in the United States of America as described in this Privacy Policy.

User Access and Choice

Upon request, EELC will provide you with information about whether we hold any of your personal information. If your personal information changes, you may correct, update, or amend your personal information by making the change on your member information page or by contacting Customer Support at 661-325-3937. If you no longer desire our services you may request to have your online information deactivated or removed by contacting EELC at 661-325-3937. We will respond to your request within a reasonable timeframe.
EELC will retain your information for as long as your information is reasonably useful for commercial purposes. Additionally, EELC will retain and use your information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements, and for other legally permissible purposes.
If you are an EELC patient and you register to access your accounts via our website or the mobile site, you may be given the opportunity to specify how you wish to receive certain types of communications from us, like newsletters. Commercial emails will include an “unsubscribe” link at the bottom you can use to opt-out of receiving future email messages from us. In addition, you can call us at 661-325-3937. However, you will continue to receive administrative emails from us, since these are necessary communications that we are legally permitted or required to send to you.

Contact Recommendation

If you email or text us, please do not include information you want to keep private. This includes information that could be used to identify you. While the email or text is on its way to us, someone else may intercept or read it. If you see an email address or a link on an EELC website that opens a pre-addressed email, do not use it to send private information.
We do not require you to communicate with us electronically. You may call or mail us a letter if you prefer. You can reach a representative by calling 661-325-3937. Additional contact information is available on our website under “Contact Us,” and under “Contact Us” on the mobile site.
If you have any questions about this Privacy Notice, you can contact the us:

Phone: 661-325-3937
Email: [email protected]

Mailing Address: Empire Eye and Laser Center, Attn. Privacy Officer, 4105 Empire Drive, Bakersfield, CA 93309

Disclaimer

This Notice is a part of the Terms of Use of our website and mobile site. When you use our website or mobile site, you accept the terms of this Notice. You can view the full Terms of Use here.

Changes to the Privacy Notice

We may update this Notice to reflect changes to our information practices. If we make any material changes we will notify you by means of a notice on this website prior to the change becoming effective. We encourage you to periodically review this page for the latest information on our privacy practices. The posted version of the Notice will apply to your use of our website and mobile site.

PRIVACY STATEMENT – CALIFORNIA: 

This following notice supplements the information provided above and applies solely to visitors, users, and others who reside in the State of California (“consumers” or “you”). We adopt this notice to comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”) and other California privacy laws.  Any terms defined in the CCPA have the same meaning when used in this notice.

Information We Collect

We collect information that identifies, relates to, describes, references, is capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer or device (“personal information”). In particular, we have collected the following categories of personal information from consumers within the last twelve (12) months:

Personal information does not include:

• Publicly available information from government records.
• De-identified or aggregated consumer information.
• Information excluded from the CCPA’s scope, like:
  • health or medical information covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) and the California Confidentiality of Medical Information Act (CMIA) or clinical trial data;
  • personal information covered by certain sector-specific privacy laws, including the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FRCA), the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) or California Financial Information Privacy Act (FIPA), and the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act of 1994.

We obtain the categories of personal information listed above from the following categories of sources:

• Directly from our patients or their agents. For example, from documents that our patients provide to us related to the services for which they engage us.
• Indirectly from our patients or their agents. For example, through information we collect from our patients in the course of providing services to them.
• Directly and indirectly from activity on our website. For example, from submissions through our website or usage details collected automatically.
• From third-parties that interact with us in connection with the services we perform.

Use of Personal Information

We may use or disclose the personal information we collect for one or more of the following business purposes:

• To fulfill or meet the reason for which the information is provided. For example, if you provide us with personal information in order for us to schedule you an appointment with a doctor, we will use that information to contact you and schedule your visit.
• To provide you with information, products or services that you request from us.
• To provide you with email alerts, event registrations and other notices concerning our products or services, or events or news, that may be of interest to you.
• To improve our website and present its contents to you.
• For testing, research, analysis and product development.
• As necessary or appropriate to protect the rights, property or safety of us, our clients or others.
• To respond to law enforcement requests and as required by applicable law, court order, or governmental regulations.
• As described to you when collecting your personal information or as otherwise set forth in the CCPA.
• To evaluate or conduct a merger, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution, or other sale or transfer of some or all of our assets, whether as a going concern or as part of bankruptcy, liquidation, or similar proceeding, in which personal information held by us is among the assets transferred.

We will not collect additional categories of personal information or use the personal information we collected for materially different, unrelated, or incompatible purposes without providing you notice.

Sharing Personal Information

We may disclose your personal information to a third party for a business purpose.  When we disclose personal information for a business purpose, we enter a contract that describes the purpose and requires the recipient to both keep that personal information confidential and not use it for any purpose except performing the contract.

In the preceding twelve (12) months, we have disclosed the following categories of personal information for a business purpose:

Category A:             Identifiers.
Category B:             California Customer Records personal information categories.
Category C:             Protected classification characteristics under California or federal law.
Category F:             Internet or other similar network activity.

We disclose your personal information for a business purpose to the following categories of third parties:

• Our affiliates.
• Service providers.
• Third parties to whom you or your agents authorize us to disclose your personal information in connection with products or services we provide to you.

In the preceding twelve (12) months, we have not sold any personal information.

Your Rights and Choices

The CCPA provides consumers (California residents) with specific rights regarding their personal information. This section describes your CCPA rights and explains how to exercise those rights.

Access to Specific Information and Data Portability Rights

You have the right to request that we disclose certain information to you about our collection and use of your personal information over the past 12 months. Once we receive and confirm your verifiable consumer request, we will disclose to you:

• The categories of personal information we collected about you.
• The categories of sources for the personal information we collected about you.
• Our business or commercial purpose for collecting or selling that personal information.
• The categories of third parties with whom we share that personal information.
• The specific pieces of personal information we collected about you (also called a data portability request).
• If we sold or disclosed your personal information for a business purpose, two separate lists disclosing:
  • sales, identifying the personal information categories that each category of recipient purchased; and
  • disclosures for a business purpose, identifying the personal information categories that each category of recipient obtained.

Deletion Request Rights

You have the right to request that we delete any of your personal information that we collected from you and retained, subject to certain exceptions. Once we receive and confirm your verifiable consumer request, we will delete (and direct our service providers to delete) your personal information from our records, unless an exception applies.

We may deny your deletion request if retaining the information is necessary for us or our service providers to:

1. Complete the transaction for which we collected the personal information, provide a good or service that you requested, take actions reasonably anticipated within the context of our ongoing business relationship with you, or otherwise perform our contract with you.
2. Detect security incidents, protect against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity, or prosecute those responsible for such activities.
3. Debug products to identify and repair errors that impair existing intended functionality.
4. Exercise free speech, ensure the right of another consumer to exercise their free speech rights, or exercise another right provided for by law.
5. Comply with the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act (Cal. Penal Code § 1546 seq.).
6. Engage in public or peer-reviewed scientific, historical, or statistical research in the public interest that adheres to all other applicable ethics and privacy laws, when the information’s deletion may likely render impossible or seriously impair the research’s achievement, if you previously provided informed consent.
7. Enable solely internal uses that are reasonably aligned with consumer expectations based on your relationship with us.
8. Comply with a legal obligation.
9. Make other internal and lawful uses of that information that are compatible with the context in which you provided it.

Exercising Access, Data Portability, and Deletion Rights

To exercise the access, data portability, and deletion rights described above, please submit a verifiable consumer request to us by either:

• Calling us at 661-325-3937
• Emailing [email protected]

Only you or a person registered with the California Secretary of State that you authorize to act on your behalf, may make a verifiable consumer request related to your personal information. You may also make a verifiable consumer request on behalf of your minor child.

You may only make a verifiable consumer request for access or data portability twice within a 12-month period. The verifiable consumer request must:

• Provide sufficient information that allows us to reasonably verify you are the person about whom we collected personal information or an authorized representative.
• Describe your request with sufficient detail that allows us to properly understand, evaluate, and respond to it.

We cannot respond to your request or provide you with personal information if we cannot verify your identity or authority to make the request and confirm the personal information relates to you.  Making a verifiable consumer request does not require you to create an account with us.  We will only use personal information provided in a verifiable consumer request to verify the requestor’s identity or authority to make the request.

Response Timing and Format

We endeavor to respond to a verifiable consumer request within 45 days of its receipt.  If we require more time (up to 90 days), we will inform you of the reason and extension period in writing.  We will deliver our written response by mail or electronically, at your option.  Any disclosures we provide will only cover the 12-month period preceding the verifiable consumer request’s receipt.  The response we provide will also explain the reasons we cannot comply with a request, if applicable.  For data portability requests, we will select a format to provide your personal information that is readily useable and should allow you to transmit the information from one entity to another entity without hindrance.

We do not charge a fee to process or respond to your verifiable consumer request unless it is excessive, repetitive, or manifestly unfounded.  If we determine that the request warrants a fee, we will tell you why we made that decision and provide you with a cost estimate before completing your request.

Non-Discrimination

We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of your CCPA rights. Unless permitted by the CCPA, we will not:

• Deny you goods or services.
• Charge you different prices or rates for goods or services, including through granting discounts or other benefits, or imposing penalties.
• Provide you a different level or quality of goods or services.
• Suggest that you may receive a different price or rate for goods or services or a different level or quality of goods or services.

Changes to Our Privacy Notice

We reserve the right to amend this privacy notice at our discretion and at any time. When we make changes to this privacy notice, we will notify you by email or through a notice on our website homepage.

Contact Information

If you have any questions or comments about this notice, our Privacy Statement, the ways in which we collect and use your personal information, your choices and rights regarding such use, or wish to exercise your rights under California law, please do not hesitate to contact us at:

Phone: 661-325-3937
Email: [email protected]

Mailing Address: Empire Eye and Laser Center, Attn. Privacy Officer, 4105 Empire Drive, Bakersfield, CA 93309