Website privacy policy

This Privacy Policy applies to all pages on the Health Care Authority website.

• We do not collect personally identifiable information (PII) about you unless you choose to provide that information to us.
• Any personal information you chose to provide is protected by security practices.
• Nonpersonal information related to your visit to our website may be automatically collected and temporarily stored.
• HCA does not disclose, give, sell, or transfer any personal information about our visitors unless required by law.

How does HCA use my personal information?

If you choose to give HCA personal information — for example by completing a “Contact Us” form, leaving a comment, sending email, or completing a survey — we may use that information to respond to your message and to help us get you the information or services you requested. Submitting personal information (name, address, telephone number, email address, etc.) is voluntary and is not required to access information on our website.

We retain the information only for as long as necessary to respond to your question or request, in most cases no longer than three months. However, information is maintained and destroyed as required by state and federal law and regulations. It may be subject to disclosure in certain cases (for example, if required by a Public Records Act request or court order).

What nonidentifiable information does HCA collect?

When you browse through our website, we gather and temporarily store technical information about your visit. This information does not identify who you are. The information we collect includes:

• The name of the domain you use to access the internet (for example, aol.com, if you are using an America Online account, or washington.edu, if you are connecting from the University of Washington’s domain).
• The date and time of your visit.
• The pages you visited.
• The address of the website you came from when you came to visit.

We use this information to improve our website and provide a better user experience for our visitors. We use tools, Google Analytics and SiteImprove, to collect and summarize this information. This information is available only to web managers and other designated staff who require this information to perform their duties. It is retained only for as long as needed for proper analysis.

Does HCA use cookies?

Yes. HCA uses “cookies” to test and optimize our website design and content. A cookie is a small text file automatically placed on your computer. We use two types of cookies on our websites.

• We use session cookies to gather data for technical purposes, such as improving navigation through our website and generating statistics about how the website is used. Session cookies are temporary text files that expire when you leave our website. When cookies expire, they are automatically deleted from your computer. We do not use session cookies to collect personal information, and we do not share data collected from session cookies.
• We use multi-session cookies, or persistent cookies, to customize our website for frequent visitors and to test variations of website design and content. Multi-session cookies are cookies that are stored over more than a single session on your computer. We do not use multi-session cookies to collect personal information, and we do not share data collected from multi-session cookies. Our multi-session cookies are set to expire two years after your last visit to our website. After two years, they are automatically deleted from your computer. HCA is unable to identify an individual by using such technologies.

You can take actions to block cookies by opting out. Blocking session cookies from your computer will not affect your access to the content and tools on our website. Blocking multi-session or persistent cookies may affect the personalization of the information on the site.

Website security

For site security purposes and to ensure that this service remains available to all users, we use software programs to monitor traffic to identify unauthorized attempts to upload or change information or otherwise cause damage. In the event of law enforcement investigations and as part of any required legal process, information from these sources may be used to help identify an individual.