WE RESPECT YOUR PRIVACY

Privacy Policy

Definition of terms
Our relationship with therapists/counsellors
Collection and use of personal and health-related information
Information we may collect from you
Client/service users
How we store, transfer, and protect your information
Disclosure of your information

Prime Mental Health Services – PMHS Privacy Policy

Please note that by accessing our websites and all social media platforms, we may collect, obtain, disclose, and share your personal information, financial, and health information to provide you with services as well as for quality improvement. PMHS values your privacy, and we are committed to protecting all Personal Information (PI) and Personal Health Information (PHI) collected or obtained via our sites or social media handles with utmost sensitivity. All PI/PHI information collected, obtained, or gathered on our sites are utilized following guidelines set out by the Personal Health Information Protection Act (PHIPA), 2004, Health Care Consent Act (HCCA), 1996, Substitute Decisions Act (SDA), 1992, and Social Work and Social Service Work Act, 1998. This privacy policy provides the basis on which any information, including PI, PHI, and financial information, or any other information we collect from you, or you provide to us, through this site or our social media handles will be processed by us. We encourage you to read this policy judiciously to understand our practices concerning your information and how we would utilize them. By visiting our website or social media handles, you accept and consent to the practices described in this policy, including as amended or updated occasionally. If for whatever reason(s) you do not agree to the terms of this policy, please stop using this website or our social media handle(s) immediately.

Definition of Terms

This privacy policy highlights the privacy of Prime Mental Health Services (PMHS), (including all domains and sub-domains, the “Sites”), which are owned and operated by Prime PMHS (“primementalhealthwellness.ca,” “our,” “we,” “us,”). PMHS operates and provides public services to individuals and families we refer to as “clients” or service “users”. Clients may access our sites for mental health information, and to find mental health providers, “therapists”, and “counsellors”. Clients may also visit our sites to read self-help mental health resources, purchase self-help mental health resources or services, book a session with our therapists or counsellors, register for mental health programs, and support what we do in the community.

Our Relationship with Therapists/Counsellors

Our therapists and counsellors are highly skilled individuals, demonstrate a high level of cultural competency and awareness, are highly professionals, and are passionate and committed to the families, individuals, and communities that they serve. Our therapists utilize diverse modalities that cut across their lived experiences, educational backgrounds, areas of specialty, and evidence-based treatment approaches to assist their clients with achieving positive life-changing results. Our therapists and counsellors access our sites to enlist their services, receive referrals, provide consultations, provide mental health assessments and treatments, and interact with their clients via diverse means. Our role as PMHS is to provide practice exposure, scheduling, and case management backend support to our therapists and counsellors for an agreed-upon fee that is subtracted from therapists’ and counsellors’ hourly rates. Therapists and counsellors do not incur initial costs to sign up with us, we get paid only when they get paid. PMHS provides clinical supervision support options to therapists or counsellors that are listed on our platform. The decision to request clinical supervision support is at the discretion of therapists and counsellors, if requested, terms, conditions, perimeter, and scope are worked out individually with the therapist and or counsellor respectively. PMHS designates therapists and counsellors listed on our platform as independent contractors, not employees of PMHS. Before therapists and or counsellors are enlisted with PMHS, they are screened for qualification, suitability, and competence. All therapists and counsellors listed on our platforms are required to provide their recent police vulnerable sector check, proof of educational qualifications, proof of professional liability insurance, proof of registration with their respective professional colleges, and employment references in the related field.

Collection and Use of Personal and Health Related Information

When you visit our website, book a therapy or counselling session, request a free consultation session, you subscribe to our newsletter or blog, you register to be enlisted in our platform as a therapist or counsellor, contact us via emails, telephone, SMS, or access our social media handles, we may collect your personal health information, personal information, and information of persons in whom support is being requested. For emphasis purposes, personal information or PI refers to any information about an identified or identifiable individual, including financial account information and Protected Health Information (PHI) or e-Personal Health Information (ePHI). We collect PI and PHI from clients, and we utilize that information to fulfill their requests. We collect PI, education records and work experience histories from our independent contractors and utilize that information to determine their suitability for our programs.

By contacting us or providing information to us via any of our access points (website, third-party listing agencies, social media handles, emails, telephone, SMS etc.), you consent to our collection, sharing, and disclosing of such information with our enlisted therapists and counsellors as outlined in this policy and to process your booking and provide services to you. Clients, service users, community members, therapists, and counsellor, confirm that in all cases where personal information is submitted or disclosed via all our access points as listed above, such disclosure, sharing, and submission does not constitute a violation of their PI/PHIPA, HCCA, SDA, Social Work, and Social Service Work Act, 1998. or any other law or regulation.

Information We May Collect From You

Independent Contractors:

We may collect your name, date of birth, address, telephone number, and email address.
Employment histories
Educational credentials
Professional college registration credentials
Criminal records/Vulnerable Sector Check
Professional Liability Insurance records
Brief practice history
Certifications
Photographs
Practice modalities.
If applicable, we may collect your financial information for wage remittance.
Every other information we may deem necessary in determining your suitability.

We may utilize your PI to manage your account, receive referrals on your behalf, administer your booking and scheduling, display your profile on our website, utilize your information for promotional purposes, interact with you in all our operationalization processes, send you messages about the referrals you have received from our platforms and share your information with potential clients or services users. We use the information you provide us about your mental health practice as part of the PMHS Public Therapist Directory. As your information is made public on our website, PMHS has no control over how third parties may utilize this information, and you agree that such public access to your information on our sites does not constitute a violation of your PI/PHI.

Client/Service Users

We may collect your name, date of birth, address, telephone number, and email address.
Child custody issues
Various forms
Signature
Gender/sexual orientation
Social determinants of health information (Race, Ethnicity, Religion, Language, place of birth, marital status, level of education, number of people income support, number of people in household, residence type, immigration status, and legal status etc.
Photographs
Service referral sources.
Biopsychosocial history via various assessment documents
Medical history/records of pre-existing condition(s)
Financial information such as bank information, credit cards, debit cards etc.
Insurance information
Employment history
Mental health diagnoses
Health/mental health symptoms
Family history
Information relating to chemical dependency and assessment.
Risk factors information such as recent and past history of suicidal/homicidal ideation or attempts.
Booking information
Previous history of health/mental treatment
Emergency contact person
Hospitalization history
Incarceration history
Emergency room visits
Medication history
Doctors/alternative level of care information
Other services or agencies previously or currently involved with
Internet protocol address (IP) – may be collected by our computer systems.
Every other information that may be relevant to us in providing you with care.

We collect and utilize the above information to administer services to you and or your referral(s). We operationalize your information following the stipulated acts above. As a client, services user, or community member, you agree that by contacting us or providing information to us via any of our access points (website, third-party listing agencies, social media handles, emails, telephone, SMS etc.), you consent to our collection, sharing and disclosing of such information with our enlisted therapists, counsellors, and partners as outlined in this policy and to process your booking and provide services to you. Clients, service users, community members, therapists, and counsellor, agree that in all cases where personal information is submitted or disclosed via all our access points as listed above, such disclosure, sharing, and submission does not constitute a violation of their PI/PHIPA, HCCA, SDA, Social Work and Social Service Work Act, 1998. or any other law or regulation by PMHS.

For us to restructure certain business operations, develop products and services that better meet the interests and needs of our clients and service users, and inform clients about relevant products and services, we may share your personal information with any of our current or future partners. By using our sites, you herewith agree to our sharing of your information and personal information with our partners and service providers. We may also use pseudonyms or generate anonymous records from personal information by removing identifying information such as your name, address, email, telephone number, or any other identifying information so that people are unable to identify you or link you to information shared. We may use this unidentified information to plan and direct future development, comprising but not limited to evaluating usage behaviors so that we may improve our services, and deliver reports based on unidentified non-personal information.

Our systems may also automatically collect and disclose your technical information such as:

Login records, browser type. browser version, time zone setting, and Internet Protocol address.
Your computer operating system, platform, browser plug-in types and versions,
History of your visit to our sites, including your URL click records.
Your search history, downloads, length of visits, and pages you visited.

How We Store, Transfer and Protect Your Information

PMHS use your billing and financial information such as bank information, credit numbers, debit card numbers and insurance information to process fees, submit service charge claims to your insurance and other fees as applicable, through third-party payment processors. PMHS does not store any bank account or credit card information in its own systems. All financial data are stored by our third-party vendors who are contractually required to comply with all regulatory procedures for processing payments.

Information you provide us may be processed, stored, transferred, or accessed by our partners, independent contractors, otherwise known as therapists and counsellors, third-party agencies and non-affiliates entities around the world as described in this policy. By using all our service access points and submitting your information, you consent to this transfer, processing and storing of your information. PMHS value your privacy, as such, we would take all steps necessary to protect information to an extend provided for by this privacy policy. Because the security of your personal information is important to us, PMHS have put in place appropriate technical and administrative measures to safeguard the information we collected through all our access points. Data or information you provide to us is store in our secure servers managed by third parties on our behalf. As stated above, PMHS do not store client’s financial information, as such data is managed by our financial services host third party agencies.

In instance where PMHS have given you access to a client portal and you have chosen a password which allows you to access your client portal, PMHS encourage you to keep your password and all other login credentials confidential. You are responsible to safeguard your login information, and to not share with anyone.

Due to the vulnerability of breach of information shared or transmitted through the internet, unfortunately, PMHS cannot guarantee protection of information you transmit to us via the internet or phone call, emails etc., during the transmission phase. While we would do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot pledge to secure your data transmitted to our Site or emails; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will utilize strict security measures and procedures to try to foil any unauthorized access.

Disclosure of Your Information

Conditions in which we share your personal information are as follows:

We may disclose your personal information and health information with our independent contractors (Therapists and Counsellors) to administer services to you.
We may disclose or share your personal and or health information during operations to provide services to you.
We may disclose your personal and or health information for reasons disclosed in our consent and confidentiality documents.
We may disclose or share your personal and or health information if required by a court order to do so for legal jurisprudence.
We may disclose your personal and or health information following this privacy policy and following regulatory provisions provided for in the privacy and other provincial, territorial, and federal laws.
We may disclose personal and or health information you disclose to us if we have reasonable grounds to believe that not doing so could result in a risk of harm to self or others.
When some circumstances highlighted above are not present, we may disclose your personal and health information when we have obtained adequate and appropriate permission from you in accordance with HCCA and PI/PHIPA
We may disclose your personal and or health information if you make threats of harm towards yourself or others and we are unable to confirm that you will not carry out your threats – we may inform individuals or groups we believe may be at risk of your threats.
We may disclose your personal and health information to Child Protection Services if we have reasonable grounds to believe a child under your custody or a child you have unrestricted access to may be at risk of harm because of child contact with you, whether parental or otherwise.
We may share your personal information with business partners, suppliers, and sub-contractors for the performance of any contract we enter with them or you to provide you with a product or service.
We may share your personal information with business partners, suppliers, and sub-contractors to provide you with information about promotions and offers.
In instances of collective, unidentified, or other data to advertisers, advertising networks, and social networks that require the data to select and serve relevant adverts to you and others. We may also use the audience they want to target. We may make use of the personal data we have collected from you to enable us to comply with our advertisers’ wishes by displaying their advertisements to that target audience.
We may disclose your personal information if we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we may disclose your personal data to the potential seller or buyer of such business or assets.
We may disclose your personal information if we are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by PMHS about its clients, services users, and contractors, will be one of the transferred assets.
We may disclose your personal information if we are under a legal obligation to disclose or share your personal data to comply with any legal obligation, to enforce agreements; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of PMHS clients and other partners or stakeholders.

Definition of terms
Our relationship with therapists/counsellors
Collection and use of personal and health-related information
Information we may collect from you
Client/service users
How we store, transfer, and protect your information
Disclosure of your information