MassMed.Org Privacy Policy

The Massachusetts Medical Society knows that you care how information about you is used and shared, and we appreciate your trust that we will do so carefully and sensibly.

What Personal Information Does the Massachusetts Medical Society Gather?

We gather:

• Information you give us.
  We receive and store any information you enter on our Web site, provide to our membership department, or provide in response to a member survey.
  • For example, you provide information in “Your Account” and in “Your Profile,” such as your name, address, and phone numbers, personal description and photograph.
  • You also provide information when you respond to our member surveys.  All personally identifying information we receive in response to a member survey is kept entirely separate from our general membership database.
    
    
• Specific inquiries.
  When you call the Society with a specific inquiry, the relevant department may collect information you provide.
  • For example, if you have a question for the Physician Practice Resource Center or the Office of the General Counsel, that department may note your member number, your question, and its resolution.
    
    
• Publicly available information.
  We receive and store publicly available information about our members.
  • For example, we integrate data from the Board of Registration in Medicine and from FOLIO into our general membership database.
    
    
• Automatic information:
  We receive and store certain types of information whenever you interact with us. 
  • For example, like many Web sites, we use “cookies,” (alphanumeric identifiers that we transfer to your computer to allow our system to recognize your computer) and we obtain certain types of information (e.g., IP Address, Click-stream, browser type and version, operating system, platform, and date and time of access) when your Web browser accesses massmed.org.
  • We use this information to evaluate use patterns so future modifications to the site will respond to site user’s needs.

Does the Massachusetts Medical Society Share the Information It Receives?

• Information about our members is an important part of our operations; it informs every decision we make.  We are not in the business of selling it to others.  We share member information only as described below:
  • We occasionally share our mailing list with a provider of a service we feel would be beneficial to our membership.
  • We employ other companies and individuals to perform functions on our behalf.  In performing those functions, they may have access to your information to do the work for which we engage them.
  • Your responses to member surveys are aggregated.  That aggregate data is then shared publicly when appropriate.  Individual responses will be shared only with your prior permission.
  • We do not share the information gathered as part of your specific inquiry with anyone outside the Society, unless we have your prior permission.
  • We do not share your email address with anyone without your prior permission.
    
    
• We reserve the right to disclose personally identifiable information to other entities or individuals in the good faith belief that such disclosure is reasonably necessary to:  (1) conform to the requirements of law; (2) protect and defend the rights or property of the Massachusetts Medical Society or any other entity; or (3) protect and defend the rights, property or safety of any individual.

How Secure is Your Information?

• We work to protect the security of your information by requiring a unique username and complex password for anyone with access to the information, and by limiting access to those whose role necessitates such access.  Any information you choose to make public in your profile, however, will be available for other e-community users to access.
• You are responsible for protecting against unauthorized access to your computer, your password, and your account.
• The Massachusetts Medical Society has strict employee policies relating to personal information.

This policy is subject to change effective upon posting of policy revisions at the massmed.org web site.