DaVita Privacy Policy

Effective June 3, 2019

DaVita Inc., and its affiliates and subsidiaries (“DaVita,” “we” or “us”) is committed to maintaining and respecting our users’ (“you,” or “your”) privacy.  We work hard to keep our services current and hope that you find this information useful. This Privacy Policy (“Privacy Policy”) tells you what information we collect, how we protect it, your relationship with our services, and what choices and rights you have.  This Privacy Policy is a part of DaVita’s Terms of Use.  It is important that you carefully read both this Privacy Policy and DaVita’s Terms of Use. 

Changes to this Privacy Policy

DaVita reserves the right to change this Privacy Policy at any time without prior notice, so check back frequently to review our current terms.  Any changes we make to this Privacy Policy will be effective for any information we already have about you.  Your continued interaction, use of, or registration with our Services (defined below) means that you accept and agree to practices described in this Privacy Policy.

Our Services

This Privacy Policy governs the manner in which DaVita collects, creates, accesses, processes, uses, maintains and discloses information collected through your interaction with a variety of our services as described below, collectively referred to as (“Services”):

  • Websites that we own and operate, including https://www.davita.com/, and associated subdomains (“Site(s)”);
  • Mobile applications that we own and operate, collectively (“App(s)”); and
  • Other online services we own and operate which hyperlink to this Privacy Policy, such as the DaVita Diet Helper (https://www.davita.com/register?p=diethelper).

Please note that the Services governed by this Privacy Policy do not include:

Except as expressly stated otherwise, we make our Services available for the purpose of providing useful information to the general public, and not for the purpose of providing health care services.  These Services are provided to you as a consumer, and not as a patient of DaVita.  In some circumstances, information we may use or disclose may also constitute Protected Health Information (“PHI”) pursuant to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (“HIPAA”).  In these circumstances, we will treat your PHI in accordance with our Notice of Privacy Practices, which applies to our delivery of health care or other HIPAA-related services to DaVita patients.

Certain of our Services may offer on-line, self-help and/or educational tools and require users to register for an online account, but our Services are not intended to serve as vehicles for providing medical advice or health care services..  Please consult your physician regarding your specific diagnosis, treatment, diet, and health questions. If you are experiencing an urgent medical condition, immediately call 9-1-1.

Information We Collect

When you interact with our Services, we may collect or create pieces of information about you as described in this Privacy Policy (“Your Information”).  For example, you might directly provide us with information that you submit to us, or you might provide us with information when you access our Services using your mobile device.  Types of Your Information we may collect include:

  • Personally identifiable and other demographic information such as your name, gender, date of birth, zip code race and ethnicity.
  • Contact information such as your address, email, phone number, or other information you submit when communicating with us, such as the “contact us” sections of our Services.
  • Your photo and other profile information when you register and create an account with us, and when you update your profile (see also MyDaVita section below).
  • If you choose to use the interactive components of our Services (which may require first establishing an account with us), we may request additional information from you, such as choosing general statements about your health.Using these interactive tools and providing additional information is strictly voluntary.
  • Information you publish or submit on publically available websites, blogs, chat rooms, and social media networks.

     

    Location Information:

    We may collect information about your physical location when you access our Services through your mobile phone or other device using various technologies described in this Privacy Policy.  We may use this location information to provide you with location-based components and content in our Services.

    Device Information:

    We may collect device-specific information when you visit our Sites or use our Apps.  This includes information such as Internet Protocol (IP) address, hardware model, operating system, unique device identifiers, and mobile network information. We may also associate the information we collect from your different devices, which helps us provide consistent Services across your devices. 

    Other Types of Your Information:

  • Our Services may use cookies and other tracking technologies to identify users who have previously used our Services so that the user is recognized upon returning.A cookie is a piece of data stored on the user's hard drive containing information about the user.If you reject the cookie, you may still use our Services but some of the features may not work as intended.A cookie may be placed on your hard drive by us or by our business partners.Most Internet browsers offer instructions in the "Help" section of the toolbar on how to reset your browser to disallow cookies.
  • Our Services may contain transparent GIF files (also known as "web beacons," "action tags," or "pixel tags") or use other technologies to help manage on-line advertising.These GIF files are used to recognize when a user views a web page or opens an email. This information enables DaVita to learn which emails and advertisements bring users to our Services.
  • To help manage our advertising, we may use third-party products such as AdSense, AdWords, Google Analytics, a range of DoubleClick-branded services, and IBM Marketing Cloud.When you visit a Service that uses one of these products, various cookies may be sent to your browser.These may be sent from multiple different domains.These cookies enable DaVita to use other services in conjunction with third-party vendors (such as ad measurement, ad delivery, or reporting services) and these third-party services may send their own cookies to your browser and collect information about your use of our Services, including your IP address.More information on, for example, Google Analytics can be found at www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/, and the option to opt-out is available here:https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
  • Sometimes, when you click on a link or an advertisement on our Services, your browser may be momentarily redirected to the website of a third-party, which, acting at the request of DaVita, notes or "counts" your response before re-directing your browser to the link you selected.This redirection process may not be apparent to you.We use this process for counting overall responses.See also Links to Third Parties section of this Privacy Policy.

MyDaVita Account

If registering a MyDaVita profile on our Site (https://www.davita.com/register), you will have the opportunity to designate whether to make your profile public or keep it private, and you may change your designation, or change your profile data at any time. Please note that public profiles are often indexed and cached by Internet search engines. Some personal profile information will be visible to other community members and could be made public when you make postings, such as comments to a forum or reviews of recipes.  Whether you provide us with Your Information or create a public profile is entirely up to you.

You may correct, amend or delete Your Information, and adjust your account settings by logging into your MyDaVita account and clicking here: https://www.davita.com/mydavita/account-settings.  To have your MyDaVita account deleted, contact us using the information in the Questions, Complaints and Contacts section below.

Communities, Blogs, and Other Public Forums

DaVita’s Services may feature public forums or other community areas where users with similar interests or medical conditions can share information.  We may also offer moderated on-line discussions.  Such communities and discussions are for informational purposes only and do not constitute medical advice.  These communities and discussions are open to the public and should not be considered private.

Any information you choose to share in our on-line communities and discussions is, by design, open to the public and is not private; therefore, you should think carefully before sharing any sensitive information, including information about your health.  What you share can be seen, disclosed to, or collected by third-parties and may be used by others in ways we cannot control or predict, including to contact you for purposes you have not authorized.

How We Use Your Information

We may use Your Information in various ways, including:

  • To respond to your questions and customer service related inquiries.
  • To provide you with specific content and administer the Services to you.
  • To deliver advertisements, emails, texts and social media notifications about our brand, products, Services, or for other promotional purposes.We may tailor our advertising based on Your Information to send you more practical product or Service recommendations and offers.
  • To analyze and improve the quality of our business and Services, and to provide you with a better user experience.
  • To combine different pieces of Your Information, to create aggregated, non-personal information, or to create de-identified information.
  • To investigate possible violations of and enforce our contracts, including any relevant terms of use or terms and conditions associated with our Services.
  • To comply with our legal obligations, and to assist law enforcement and respond to regulatory or other legal inquiries.

Newsletters, Emails and Text Messages

When you register for an account or certain other actions through our Services, you may be given the option of receiving recurring informational/promotional newsletters or other emails from DaVita or our business partners.  In order for you to subscribe to these emails, we will ask for your contact information.  You can unsubscribe from DaVita emails at any time by simply following the directions included at the bottom of each email or by editing the information you entered when you registered.  Please note that if you do unsubscribe from receiving marketing-related emails from us, we may still need to send you important administrative messages.  You cannot opt-out from receiving these administrative messages.

You can opt-out of text messages to which you have subscribed.  The simplest way to opt-out of receiving text messages is to reply “Stop” to any text message you receive from us.  We will implement your request as soon as reasonably practical but no later than 30 days from the date of such request.

If you have difficulties with our newsletters, emails or texts that you cannot address as described above, please see the contact information in the “Questions, Complaints and Contacts” section below and let us know about your issue.

How We Disclose Your Information

The following describes the purposes for which we may share Your Information, and who we may disclose it to:

  • To an affiliate or subsidiary to which such information is associated.DaVita obtains various types of services, such as information technology, email delivery and data analysis, from its affiliates, subsidiaries, and other trusted business partners.DaVita may share Your Information with these vendors to enable them to deliver services to DaVita.
  • To third-parties for their direct marketing purposes, provided that you have consented to such sharing.
  • In response to a court order, subpoena, search warrant, law, or regulation. We may cooperate with law enforcement in investigating and prosecuting activities that are illegal, violate our rules, or may be harmful to other visitors.
  • If we believe disclosure is necessary or appropriate to prevent physical harm or financial loss, or in connection with an investigation of suspected or actual illegal activity, or violation of any relevant terms of use or other contracts.
  • In connection with a corporate transaction, such as a sale, assignment, divestiture, merger, bankruptcy, consolidation, reorganization, liquidation, or other transfer of the company or its assets. We may transfer or assign this Privacy Policy and any of Your Information to a third-party entity that acquires or is merged with DaVita as part of a merger, acquisition, sale, or other change of ownership.
  • In other ways described to you at the point of collection, or pursuant to your consent.

How We Interact With Third Parties

Links to Third-Party Websites

 As a resource to users of our Services, DaVita may provide links to other unaffiliated websites.  DaVita, however, cannot guarantee the policies or standards used by such third-party websites.  DaVita does not endorse, nor is it responsible for, the content of, or the privacy practices employed by, any non-DaVita websites. If you visit a third-party website through use of our Services, information you provide on the third-party website is not subject to this Privacy Policy or any other DaVita policy.  You should consult the privacy policies of each website you visit.

Social Media Plugins

DaVita’s Services may use social media plugins to enable you to easily share information with others.  When you visit a website, the operator of the social plugin can place a cookie on your computer or device enabling that operator to recognize individuals who have previously visited that website.  If you are logged into a social media account while browsing our Services, the social plugins allow that social media company to receive information about your use of our Services.  Social plugins also allow the social media company to share information about your activities when using our Services with other users of their social media website.  DaVita does not control any of the content from social media plugins.  For more information about plugins from other social media websites you should refer to those companies’ privacy policies.

How We Protect Your Information

DaVita’s Services incorporate safeguards to help protect the security and privacy of Your Information.  DaVita employs certain procedural and technological security measures designed to protect Your Information from unauthorized access and disclosure.  We may use encryption, secure sockets layer (SSL) technology, internal restrictions, risk management programs, or other security measures.  However, no security system is impenetrable, and transmission of information over the Internet is not completely secure.  While we take steps to protect Your Information, we cannot guarantee its privacy or security. If you have any questions about the security of Your Information, please reach out to us using the contact information in the “Questions, Complaints and Contacts” section below.

Children’s Privacy

DaVita’s Services are intended for adults age 18 and older, and are not intended to attract children.  DaVita will not knowingly collect Your Information from any person we actually know to be under 13 years old.  If you are under the age of 13, do not use the Services or provide any information through our Services.

Do Not Track Signals

Some web browsers may transmit “do not track” signals to websites with which the browser communicates. Our Services do not currently respond to these “do not track” signals.

Your Rights

We strive to maintain the accuracy of Your Information, and will use our commercially reasonable efforts to respond promptly to update our database when you tell us any such information in our database is not accurate.  It is your responsibility to ensure that such information is accurate, complete and up-to-date.  To make changes or delete Your Information, to delete your account, or for other requests or issues, please reach out to us using the contact information in the “Questions, Complaints and Contacts” section below.

Your California Privacy Rights

California Civil Code Section 1798.83, entitles California customers to request information relating to whether a business has disclosed Personal Information to any third-parties for the third-parties’ direct marketing purposes.  As explained elsewhere in this Privacy Policy, DaVita will not sell or transfer your Personal Information to third-party companies for their direct marketing purposes without your consent.  California users who wish to request further information about our compliance with this statute or who have questions may contact us as described in the “Questions, Complaints and Contacts” section below.

Retention of Your Information

We will retain Your Information for the length of time needed to fulfill the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law.  If you close your account with us, we will no longer use your online account information or share it with third parties.  We may, however, retain a copy of Your Information for archival purposes, and to avoid identity theft or fraud.

Questions, Complaints and Contact Us

If you have a question about DaVita’s Privacy Policy, Your Information, or DaVita’s uses of Your Information, you may contact us by clicking on the contact us link or by using the information below.

DaVita Privacy

Attn: Chief Privacy Officer

2000 16th Street

Denver, CO 80202

Email: onlineprivacy@davita.com