Privacy notice

This notice explains what Geste Health does with information you give us through this website. It is deliberately short, because this website deliberately collects very little.

This notice is not about your medical record

If you become a patient, the privacy of your medical record is governed by a separate document — our Notice of Privacy Practices — and by federal and state law, including HIPAA. That is a different and stronger set of protections than the ones described here, and you will be given that notice when you begin care. This page covers only the public website.

What we collect

What you send us

If you use the form on our Connect page, we receive your name, your email address, your phone number if you provide one, the state you told us you are in, and the message you wrote. We ask you not to include medical details in that form, and we do not want them there.

What the server records

Our hosting provider keeps ordinary technical logs of requests to the site, which can include your IP address, the time of the request, the page requested, and your browser type. These are used to keep the site working and to protect it from abuse.

What we do not collect

This site sets no advertising cookies, runs no advertising trackers, and does not build a profile of you. We do not sell or rent information about you to anyone, for any purpose.

Why the contact form is not a medical channel

The Connect form is a request to be contacted. It is not encrypted end to end, it is not part of your medical record, and it should not be used to send anything clinical — no symptoms, no diagnoses, no medications, no history. Once you are in touch, there is a private and secure place for all of that. If you do send clinical detail anyway, we will handle it carefully, but please do not.

How we use what you send

Only to reply to you, and to work out whether this practice is a suitable place for the care you are looking for. We do not add you to a mailing list, and we do not use your note for marketing.

Who else is involved

Running a website means relying on a few service providers. The ones that can see information relating to you are:

• Our hosting and email providers, which store and deliver the site and pass on your message to us.
• Akute Health, which provides the patient portal and the electronic medical record for the practice. The portal is a separate service with its own privacy terms, and following the Patient Portal link takes you out of this website.

These providers act on our instructions and are not permitted to use your information for their own purposes.

How long we keep it

Contact-form messages are kept only as long as needed to respond to you and to keep a record of the enquiry, and are then deleted. Technical server logs are kept for a short period on a rolling basis. If you become a patient, your medical record is retained for the period required by Texas law, which is longer and is covered by the Notice of Privacy Practices rather than this page.

Your choices

You can ask us what we hold about you from this website, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. Email connect@gestehealth.com and we will deal with it. Requests about your medical record are handled under the Notice of Privacy Practices, which sets out your rights of access and amendment in detail.

Children

This website is intended for adults. We do not knowingly collect information through it from anyone under 18.

Security

The site is served over HTTPS and we take reasonable steps to protect what is sent to us. No website can promise perfect security, which is exactly why we ask you to keep clinical information off the form.

Changes

If this notice changes, the date at the top of the page changes with it.

Contact

Questions about this notice can go to connect@gestehealth.com, or to Geste Health, 2021 Guadalupe Street, Suite 260, Austin, Texas 78705.