Privacy — Health e Match

Who We Are

healthematch.com is operated by Health e Match, PBC, a Delaware public benefit corporation. This policy describes what healthematch.com collects, how it is used, who can see it, and the choices you have. It applies to patients, practices, and anyone visiting the site.

healthematch.com makes introductions between patients and practices in the United States only. It is not a healthcare provider and does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

What You Give Us

Everything below is entered by you. Nothing is bought, scraped, or imported from anywhere else.

Everyone

An email address and a password. The password is stored only as a one-way hash; nobody at healthematch.com can read it.
A ZIP code, used to work out the distance between a patient and a practice. The distance is shown; the ZIP code itself is not.

Patients

Your first and last name. Practices see a display name, never your full legal name, unless you choose to tell them after you match.
Your diagnoses, your symptoms, and the therapies you are exploring.
Your insurance: the payer, whether you pay out of pocket, or a federal program such as Medicare or Medicaid.
Anything you write in your own words, and a profile photo if you add one.

Practices

The practice name, locations, and a description.
The National Provider Identifier (NPI), license numbers, and any credential documents you upload.
Your clinicians, specialties, the conditions you treat, and the procedures and therapies you offer, including the regulatory status you state for each.
For a paid subscription, a payment method. It is handled by our payment processor; healthematch.com never sees or stores a card number.

Messages

Once a patient and a practice match, they can message each other on healthematch.com. Those messages are stored so both sides can read them. Nobody else reads them in the ordinary course; see Who Can See It for the exceptions.

What We Collect Without Asking

Very little, on purpose.

No advertising cookies, no analytics, no tracking pixels. There is no third-party script on healthematch.com watching what you do.
A sign-in session is kept in your browser’s storage so you stay signed in. Signing out removes it.
Server logs. The services that host healthematch.com record the IP address, browser type, and time of each request, as every web host does. These are used for security and to keep the site running, and are not joined to your profile.
Fonts are loaded from Google Fonts. Your browser requests the font file from Google, which can see your IP address in doing so. healthematch.com sends Google nothing about you.

How We Use It

To make introductions. A patient’s diagnoses, symptoms, therapies, insurance, and distance decide which practices they are introduced to. A practice’s conditions, treatments, and locations decide which patients see it.
To verify practices. An NPI is checked against the federal NPPES registry, and practices and clinicians are screened against the federal exclusion list. Credential documents are reviewed by a person.
To carry messages between a patient and a practice after they match.
To bill practices that hold a subscription. Patients are never billed.
To keep a record of who viewed health information, so that a patient can be told who has looked at their profile and when.
To answer you when you write to us.

Your information is not used for advertising, is not sold, and is not shared with anyone for their own marketing. No list is compiled from it.

Who Can See It

Patients

A practice cannot see you until you have swiped on that practice. Until then, no practice knows you exist. After you swipe, that one practice sees your display name, your health information, your insurance, and your distance from them, so it can decide whether to swipe back. If it does, messaging opens. No practice is given your email address or any other way to reach you outside healthematch.com.

Practices

Your profile, credentials, clinicians, and the regulatory status you have stated are visible to patients who are introduced to you, so they can decide whether to swipe. Patients see what you wrote, exactly as you wrote it.

Nobody Else, Except

Service providers that run the parts of healthematch.com we do not build ourselves, listed below. They process information on our instructions and for no other purpose.
A reviewer at healthematch.com verifying a practice’s credentials, resolving a report, or answering a support request from you.
When the law requires it — a subpoena, a court order, or a lawful request from a government authority — or to protect someone from serious harm.
A successor, if healthematch.com is ever acquired or merged. You would be told before that happened, and this policy would continue to apply to what was already collected.

Service Providers

healthematch.com runs on a small number of services, each with a narrow job:

Supabase — the database, sign-in, and file storage. Everything you enter lives here, in the United States.
Cloudflare — hosts the site and delivers it to your browser.
Stripe — payment methods and subscriptions for practices. Stripe holds the payment method; healthematch.com holds only a reference to it. Patients never interact with Stripe.
Google Fonts — the typefaces, as described above.
NPPES and the federal exclusion list — public registries an NPI and a name are checked against when a practice is verified. No patient information is ever sent to them.

Health Information

A patient’s diagnoses, symptoms, therapies, and insurance are health information, and healthematch.com treats them that way:

Encrypted in transit and at rest.
Readable only by the patient, by a practice that patient has swiped on, and by a reviewer at healthematch.com when one of the exceptions above applies.
Every view of a patient’s health information by a practice is recorded — who, what, and when — in a log that cannot be edited or deleted. A patient can ask for the entries about their own profile at any time.
Never shown on a page a search engine can index, and never sent in a URL.

healthematch.com is not a healthcare provider, health plan, or clearinghouse. The safeguards above are ours by choice and by contract, not a claim of compliance with any particular statute. A practice that receives a patient’s information through healthematch.com is responsible for handling it under the laws that apply to that practice.

Your Choices

Change or remove anything on your profile at any time, from your dashboard.
Pass or unmatch. A patient can pass on a practice, and either side can unmatch. Unmatching closes the conversation.
Ask who has viewed your health information. Write to us and we will send you the log entries for your profile.
Delete your account. Write to us from the email address on the account. Your profile and messages are removed; the records we are required to keep are described under How Long We Keep It.
Get a copy of what we hold about you, in a readable format, on request.

We do not sell personal information or share it for targeted advertising, so there is nothing to opt out of on that front. If you live in a state whose privacy law gives you additional rights, you can exercise them by writing to the address below; we will not treat you differently for doing so.

How Long We Keep It

Your profile and messages — for as long as your account exists. Deleting the account deletes them.
The record of who viewed health information — six years, whether or not the account still exists, because it protects the patient it is about. The entries name the viewer, not the content that was viewed.
Verification records for a practice — for as long as the practice is on healthematch.com and six years after, so that a past verification can be answered for.
Billing records — for as long as tax and accounting law requires.
Server logs — a short, rolling period set by the host.

Security

Connections to healthematch.com are encrypted. Access to the database is limited by role: a practice’s session can only reach the patients who chose it, and a patient’s session can only reach their own profile and their own matches. Those limits are enforced in the database itself, not only in the page. No system is perfectly secure; if we learn of a breach affecting your information, we will tell you as the law requires, and sooner where we can.

Children

healthematch.com is for adults. You must be 18 or older to create a profile. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18; if you believe a minor has created a profile, write to us and it will be removed.

Changes to This Policy

If this policy changes in a way that matters to you, we will tell you by email and on healthematch.com before the change takes effect. The date at the top is the date the current version took effect.

Contact

Questions, requests, and notices about privacy: ariney@healthematch.com.

By post: Health e Match, PBC, 8 The Green, Suite A, Dover, Delaware 19901, United States. Email reaches us faster.