Who we are
Primary Care Network (PCN) is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to improving patient care through quality continuing medical education. From live, multi-specialty activities to engaging and innovative online offerings, PCN is nationally accredited and manages a network of primary care clinicians, accrediting activities in a wide variety of program formats and therapeutic areas. Primary Care Network is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to provide continuing medical education for physicians.
Primary Care Network is committed to maintaining the trust and confidence of visitors to our website. In particular, PCN is not in the business of selling, renting, or trading your personal information with other companies and businesses for marketing purposes. On occasion, an education partner may ask us to promote CME offerings that may be of interest to you in our monthly newsletter or other email communications. However, your personal information will never be disclosed to others.
What personal data we collect and why we collect it
Primary Care Network is committed to protecting the privacy of its Internet site users. We maintain safeguards to store and secure the information of our users.
We collect information when you sign up for our newsletter, fill out our ‘contact us form’ or ‘PCN Service Questionnaire’, register for a live CME conference, or when you are providing information necessary to complete an online activity for continuing medical education (CME) credit.
Information we collect
It is PCN’s policy to collect only information that the visitor or user knowingly and willingly provides. Users of the public area of the PCN website are not required to provide any information and may browse the site anonymously.
Users of the online CME portion (Primary Issues™) of the website will be required to provide:
- First and Last Name
- Degrees
- Email address
- Mailing address
- Phone number
- Demographic information such as: specialty, practice setting, # of years in practice, how many days per week a clinician sees patients, and how many patients per day
- If applicable, users requesting American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) MOC points, information collected includes your ABIM ID number and date of birth (month and day only). This information is shared with the ABIM through Primary Care Network’s ACCME Program and Activity Reporting System (PARS).
Where do we collect information?
- Contact Us: https://primarycarenetwork.org/contact-us/
- Newsletter Sign-up: https://primarycarenetwork.org/sign-up/
- PCN Services Questionnaire: https://primarycarenetwork.org/pcn-accreditation-questionnaire/
- CME Activities Post-Test Questions pages
Comments
When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.
An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
Web server logs
Our web server collects and logs general non-personal information which may include information about your Internet Service Provider, IP address, the pages you visit, your computer’s operating system and browser, and the time, date, and duration of your visit.
Cookies
Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer’s hard drive by your web browser when you visit any website. They allow information gathered on one web page to be stored until it is needed for use on another, allowing a website to provide you with a personalized experience and the website owner with statistics about how you use the website so it can be improved.
Some cookies may last for a defined period of time, such as one day or until you close your browser. Others last indefinitely. Your web browser should allow you to delete any you choose. It also should allow you to prevent or limit their use.
We use cookies to help us with compiling aggregate information about traffic to our site. We use a third-party service, Google Analytics, to collect and report on these site metrics. We do this to find out things such as the aggregate number of visitors to various parts of the site. This information is only processed in a way that does not identify anyone. We do not make and do not allow Google to make, any attempt to find out the identities of those visiting our site.
Cookies may also be utilized to help with any site interactions such as navigation to offer the best user experience possible.
Advertisements and the use of cookies
Third parties may advertise on our website. In doing so, those parties, their agents, or other companies working for them may use technology that automatically collects information about you when their advertisement is displayed on our website.
They may also use other technology such as cookies or JavaScript to personalize the content and to measure the performance of their advertisements.
We do not have control over these technologies or the data that these parties obtain. Accordingly, this privacy notice does not cover the information practices of these third parties.
We may also use cookies to better track any advertisements and may use Google to collect and report on activity related to the ad. As with our site metrics, this information is only processed in a way that does not identify anyone. We do not make and do not allow Google to make, any attempt to find out the identities of those visiting our site. Google’s privacy policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy
You may choose to disable cookies. By doing so, you will still have full access to the content on our site.
Analytics
We use cookies to help us with compiling aggregate information about traffic to our site. We use a third-party service, Google Analytics, to collect and report on these site metrics. We do this to find out things such as the aggregate number of visitors to various parts of the site. This information is only processed in a way that does not identify anyone. We do not make and do not allow Google to make, any attempt to find out the identities of those visiting our site.
How we use and process the data we collect
PCN uses the data collected to better serve its website users. The data collected is used to:
- Update and improve the content of the website
- Provide CME credit/certificates to those who qualify
- Provide users with updates about our website and other PCN activities and services
- Invite users to participate in needs analysis surveys to further PCN’s educational efforts
We may employ other companies and individuals to perform functions on our behalf. Our employees, agents, and contractors who have access to personally identifiable information are required to protect the information in a manner that is consistent with this Privacy Statement. Primary Care Network may partner with another organization or accredited provider and advertise and/or host an activity on our website. If you are leaving the PCN website to visit another organization’s website, PCN indicates this on the specific activity homepage. If you complete a CME activity accredited by another provider (not PCN), the information will be shared with the accredited provider.
We use a third-party provider, Constant Contact, to deliver our monthly newsletter and other CME offerings that visitors have opted-in to receive. Much like Google Analytics, we gather un-identified statistics around email openings and clicks using industry-standard technologies to help us monitor and improve our communications with you. For more information, please see Constant Contact’s privacy statement at: https://www.constantcontact.com/legal/privacy-statement. You can unsubscribe to general mailings at any time of the day or night by clicking on the unsubscribe link at the bottom of our emails or by contacting us directly: https://primarycarenetwork.org/contact-us/.
Information consent to transfer, storage, and retention
Our website is hosted and operated in the United States. If you are located outside of the United States, please be aware that any information you provide to us will be transferred to the United States. By using our website, participating in any of our services, and/or providing us with your information, you consent to this transfer.
All data is securely stored and processed for the period necessary to achieve the purpose of its storage – historical CME data and subscription to Primary Issues™ newsletters and other CME-related announcements.
We use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates to verify our identity to your browser and to encrypt any data you give us.
Whenever information is transferred between us, you can check that it is done so using SSL by looking for a closed padlock symbol or other trust marks in your browser’s URL bar or toolbar.
What rights you have over your data
If you have subscribed to our newsletter, left comments anywhere on the site, or completed a CME activity, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us.
At any time, a user can request to review their information, request that their information be restricted from any processing, or be entirely removed from the database. Make any requests by contacting us directly: https://primarycarenetwork.org/contact-us/.
When we receive any request to access, edit or delete personally identifiable information, we shall first take reasonable steps to verify your identity before granting you access or otherwise taking any action. This is important to safeguard your information.
Contacting us
If you have any questions regarding our privacy policy, please contact us at:
Primary Care Network
2131 West Republic Road #206
Springfield, MO 65807
(417) 877-6668
education@primarycarenetwork.org
Revised 6/5/2018
