Privacy policy

View Advocate's Notice of Privacy Practices

Advocate Health Care supports and recognizes our patients' right to expect that their medical records and other information about their care will be kept confidential. Our Notice of Privacy Practices, effective September 1, 2019, includes:

When we are required to obtain your authorization for disclosures, including for the use of psychotherapy notes;
How we may use your information for fundraising, as well as your right to opt-out of receiving such communications;
Your right to receive notification if a breach occurs.

For further questions regarding the Notice of Privacy Practices, or other HIPAA concerns, please call the Advocate Privacy Office at 1.888.847.6331.

Website privacy policy

Advocate Health Care is committed to protecting the privacy of visitors to our website (www.advocatehealth.com). Information gathered on our website is used to monitor our effectiveness in providing relevant and credible health information, in answering questions, online scheduling, appointment requests, real-time chat, online bill payment, virtual/telehealth, and in improving our website. As a not-for-profit, faith-based health care delivery system, Advocate is committed to making certain that our website is used as a resource to fulfill our mission of serving the health care needs of individuals, families and the communities in which they live.

Our website (www.advocatehealth.com) is developed by Advocate Health Care. Our postal address is: Advocate Health Care, 3075 Highland Parkway, Suite 600, Downers Grove, IL, 60515. Contact us with questions or concerns about the website.

What information do we collect?

This site recognizes and collects, when possible, the domain name of a visitor's server (for example, advocatehealth.com or aol.com). We do not automatically collect the full email address of visitors to our website. The only way we obtain your name or email address is when you choose to provide that information to us. Examples of how you might provide us with such personal information include:

Completing a survey or feedback form;
Email us with a comment or question;
Subscribing to our email notification service for new editions of Health Advocate magazine;
Establishing a personalized homepage via our website;
Making an online appointment / requestion an appointment;
Engaging in an online dialogue via chat;
Completing an online bill payment;
Scheduling and/or use of Virtual Visits;
Preforming online check-in;
Using site-based wayfinding functions.

We use Google Universal Analytics to collect website data that allows us to get a better understanding of how our site visitors interact with our online content. If you do nothing during your visit but browse through the website or download information, Google Universal Analytics will automatically gather and store certain information about your visit. This information does not identify you personally and is used in a general way to help us improve our website and tell us the number of visitors to our site each day.

Our web server automatically collects and records the following information:

Aggregate information on what pages are accessed;
Address of the website that linked to us (referral URL);
Date and time you access our site;
Name and release number of web browser software used;
Operating system used;
Visitor's domain name, but not the email address;
Visitor's IP address;
Age, gender and interests.

Completing a survey or feedback form;
Email us with a comment or question;
Subscribing to our email notification service for new editions of Health Advocate magazine;
Establishing a personalized homepage via our website.

How do we use the information we collect?

Advocate Health Care does not sell, trade or rent personal information about its website visitors.
The information we collect about the domain name of the server from which you are visiting is aggregated and used solely to determine the number of visitors to our site each day, and sources of traffic.
Email addresses provided by visitors are used to respond to comments submitted through our feedback and surveys forms, when indicated. email addresses provided when subscribing to email bulletins are used to distribute the bulletins via email to subscribers. Information provided by visitors who choose to establish a personal homepage is used to furnish that page with the data requested by the visitor and to send information requested by the visitor.
If a website visitor asks us to send material that cannot be transmitted electronically, we will need to know the visitor's name, email address and mailing address. We will use that information only to fulfill the visitor's request.
Website visitors who complete a website survey and indicate a willingness to participate in future surveys are asked to provide their name, email address and telephone number. That information is shared with carefully screened market research firms with which Advocate Health Care has business relationships.
Information provided to schedule online appointment, pay online bills, chat, virtual visits and other web functions may be transferred to 3rd party vendors and partners to continue service.

How can I get my name removed from your files?

If you do not want to receive email from Advocate Health Care, please follow the guidelines below and submit your request here. When you write, it is imperative that you provide the following information so that we can be sure to honor your request:

Your full name;
Your active email address (If you use more than one email address, send a message to us from each of your email accounts.);
A sentence asking that your email address be removed from our files;
The specific name of the Advocate Health Care email bulletin(s) that you no longer wish to receive.

We will process your request as quickly as possible.

Data collection

You may browse many areas of our website, including our home page, without disclosing any personal information about yourself. Within these areas we only collect and store the information that is automatically recognized by the Web server, such as your IP address and files you request from the server.

We collect the personal data that you volunteer on registration(s), survey, online chat, online bill pay, virtual/telehealth visits, or other forms, or by email. Additionally, some areas of our website might be available only to certain persons and will require a login and password to access these areas. In order to be granted a login and password you may be asked some demographic information about yourself.

We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. In specific forms where we may ask for information about children we take steps to protect the privacy of those children by making reasonable efforts to ensure that a parent has entered or authorized the collection of the child's personal information.

Data analysis

As described above, we sometimes collect anonymous information from visits to our site to help us provide better customer service. For example, we measure visitor activity on our website, but we do so in ways that keep the information anonymous. We use the information that we collect to measure the number of visitors to the different areas of our site and to help us make our site more useful to visitors. This includes analyzing these logs periodically to measure the traffic through our servers, the number of pages visited and the level of demand for pages and topics of interest. The logs may be preserved indefinitely and used at any time and in any way to prevent security breaches and to ensure the integrity of the data on our servers.

Cookies & other technologies

We collect the anonymous information we mentioned above through the use of various technologies, one of which is called "cookies". A cookie is an element of data that the website can send to your browser, which may then be stored on your hard drive. Cookies may last for only a single session or may span multiple sessions. We use cookies to track user activity by our registered users. Finally, cookies are employed in other applications that require the storage of user data from one screen to the next.

Your consent

By using our website, you consent to the collection and use of the information discussed above by Advocate Health Care. Changes in this policy will be posted on this page so that you may always be aware of what information is being collected, how it is being used, and under what circumstances it is being disclosed.

Our commitment

Advocate Health Care is committed to its mission of serving the health care needs of individuals, families and communities. We will live up to the privacy standards outlined in this policy because we are obligated to act in good faith, to fulfill the organization's mission of service and to act in accordance with Advocate's core values of compassion, equality, excellence, partnership and stewardship. Meeting these obligations compels us to be honest, to act in the public's best interests and to protect the privacy and confidentiality of all information provided to us, as outlined in this policy.

Tell us what you think

Advocate Health Care welcomes your questions and comments about privacy. Contact us.