Privacy Policy

What information do we collect?

It is not necessary to register on our site. If you only visit our site, some impersonal data may be collected via cookies, such as the referral page, the time you spent on the site and navigation within the site. If you register on our site, we will use cookies to store your preferences regarding our site. Cookies are small files that a site or its service provider transfers to your computer’s hard drive through your Web browser (if you allow) that enables the sites or service provider’s systems to recognize your browser and capture and remember certain information. Cookies are not harmful and cannot introduce viruses or extract personally identifiable information. You may block (opt out) of the use of cookies for this site by:

• Setting your browser not to accept cookies from this domain (www.heartcareintl.org)
• Enabling DoNotTrack policy in your browser (currently Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari support this)—http://donottrack.us
• Installing Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on — http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout

Filling out forms and questionnaires: In doing so, you are giving us your permission to collect all personally identifiable information that you enter, but we will not store confidential information on our site.

Donations: When making a donation on-line, you may be asked to enter your name, email address, phone number and credit card information. We do not sell, trade, exchange, give or otherwise transfer to any other company, not-for-profit or other outside parties this information or any other personally identifiable information you disclose to us during the donation process. After making a donation, your private information such as credit card information will not be stored on our servers. We implement a variety of security measures to maintain the safety of your personal information if and when you enter or submit your personal information. We offer the use of a secure server. All supplied sensitive/credit information is transmitted via Secure Socket Layer (SSL) tehnology and then encrypted into our Payment gateway provider’s database only to be accessible by those authorized who have special access rights to such systems and are required to keep the information confidential.

Volunteers: We plan to introduce a restricted access portion of our site where past and prospective medical and non-medical team members can submit information to our administrative staff for upcoming mission trips. Such individual volunteers’ information will be accessible only to our administrative staff and team captains for purposes of organizing a medical mission, although the professional qualifications may be shared with the government authorities and hospital(s) of the host country upon their request. Please note that we do not collect Social Security numbers.

What do we use your information for?

Information we collect from you may be used in one of the following ways: to improve our website; to improve customer service; to process transactions; to send periodic emails. If you are a donor, your information will be used as described above. If you are a team member, a prospective team member or volunteer, your information may be used to provide information to you on our activities and upcoming mission trips, and to provide your professional qualifications to host country government authorities and hospital(s) where our missions are conducted.

Do we disclose any information to outside parties?

We do not sell, trade or otherwise transfer to outside parties your personally identifiable information. This does not include trusted third parties who assist us in operation our website or providing services to our donors, so long as those parties agree to keep this information confidential. We may also release your information when we believe its release is necessary or appropriate to comply with law, enforce our site policies, or to protect our or others’ rights and privacy. In particular, volunteers for our medical missions should be aware that information about their professional qualifications may be shared with the government authorities and hospital(s) of the host country upon their request for the limited purpose of enabling them to grant permission for the mission to proceed and to allow volunteers access to the host country and the hospital(s).

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)

We do not currently collect individual patient information on line. We collect and store aggregated and individual patient information offline. Information about the patients treated on our mission trips may be collected, stored or transmitted between or among medical personnel before, during and after our missions but only via such personnel’s employer’s secure websites, secure email systems and secure facsimile transmissions that are compliant with HIPAA. Aggregated patient information is displayed on our website including the number of patients operated on, outcomes and the number of patients having specific conditions whom we have treated.

We may in the future introduce a restricted access portion of our site where only qualified medical personnel participating in a mission will be able to access individual patient information.

Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act Compliance (COPPA)

In compliance with the requirements of COPPA we do not collect any information from anyone under 13 years of age who visits our site. Our website is directed to people who are at least 13 years old or older. Because the nature of our mission involves the provision of free medical services to disadvantaged children in developing countries, our website includes photographs of our patients without any personal identifying information; while the photos are of actual patients, names contained in the captions to the photos and any accompanying narratives have been changed to protect their privacy.

Online Privacy Policy Only

This online privacy policy applies only to information on or collected through our website and not to information collected offline.

Your Consent

By using our site, you consent to our website’s Privacy Policy.

Changes to our Privacy Policy

If we decide to change our Privacy Policy, we will post those changes on this page.