Privacy Policy

1. Who We Are and Scope

Pacific MedicoLegal, a California practice management company, supports physicians who perform Qualified Medical Evaluations and expert witness work. This policy covers our website and the business correspondence that follows: forms you submit, messages you send us, and the records our web server keeps.

Protected health information falls outside this policy. We handle medical records, reports, and claim files as a business associate of the physician, under HIPAA, California medical privacy law, and a written Business Associate Agreement, which governs those records. An examinee asking about a personal file should start with the physician, and we will name that physician on request.

2. Information We Collect

What You Give Us

No page here requires a form before you can read the content. When you send one, we collect only what the request requires:

• Contact Details. Name, firm or practice, role, email, phone, and mailing address.
• Request Details. Evaluation type, party represented, claim, panel, or case numbers, date of injury, specialty, location, and language support needs.
• Physician Inquiries. Specialty, board certification, licensure, location, and availability.
• Free-Text Messages. Please leave clinical detail out. When records are needed, we send an encrypted upload link.

What We Collect Automatically

Our web server keeps operational logs: network protocol address, date and time, page requested, response status, browser and device type, referring page, and approximate region. We read them to keep the site running and to detect abusive traffic, never to name a visitor.

What We Never Collect

• No advertising pixels, retargeting tags, or cross-site trackers.
• No Social Security, driver's license, payment card, biometric, or precise location data.
• No medical records through web forms.

3. How We Use It

• To Respond to You. Answering your question and naming who handles the reply.
• To Coordinate a Request. Conflict checks, matching to the right specialty and location, scheduling, and required notices.
• To Discuss Working Together. Following up with a physician who asked about our services.
• To Operate and Protect the Site. Keeping pages available and stopping fraud and abuse.
• To Meet Legal Obligations. Recordkeeping, lawful process, and disputes.

We build no advertising profiles and repurpose nothing you send without telling you first.

4. Cookies

Strictly necessary cookies keep the site working and secure: page state, form submission, and protection against cross-site request forgery. They carry no advertising tag and cannot be switched off without breaking the site.

Everything else stays optional and loads only after you agree. Your browser can view, delete, or block cookies at any time.

5. How We Share It

We do not sell or rent personal information. No trading, no licensing to data brokers. We disclose under four circumstances, and only these:

• Service Providers Under Contract. Hosting, email, encrypted file transfer, telephone, electronic signature, billing, and accounting. A written agreement limits each one, and any vendor that may see protected health information signs a Business Associate Agreement first.
• The Parties to a Matter. The attorney or claims administrator, the opposing party, the physician, the administrative director, and any language support provider, under California ex parte rules.
• Professional Advisors. Our attorneys, auditors, and carriers, under duties of confidentiality.
• Law and Safety. Subpoena, court order, or other lawful process, or where disclosure becomes necessary to defend legal claims or protect anyone's safety.

Through a merger or transfer of assets, records may move with the business, and any recipient stays bound by this policy.

6. Data Security

• Encrypted Transfer. We operate under HIPAA and sign a Business Associate Agreement for every matter. Records move through encrypted channels tied to a matter, and we recommend that channel for anything protected.
• Access on a Need Basis. Each account belongs to one person, never shared, and closes once no longer needed.
• Logging. We log every action taken on a case.
• A Written Agreement First. Vendors sign before touching anything sensitive.

No system stays perfectly secure. We commit to the least data, the fewest people with access, and a record of what happened. More on our security page.

7. Retention

We keep information only as long as the collecting purpose or the law requires. We retain health information as the Business Associate Agreement directs.

At the end of a period we delete or anonymize the record. Backups age out on their own schedule.

8. Your California Privacy Rights

The California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended, grants California residents rights over the personal information a business holds. We honor them for every visitor who asks.

• The Right to Know. What we collected about you, where the data came from, why, and who received a disclosure.
• The Right to Delete. Deletion of what we collected from you, subject to statutory exceptions.
• The Right to Correct. Tell us what reads wrong and what the record should say.
• The Right to Opt Out of Sale or Sharing. We do neither, so nothing exists to opt out of.
• The Right to Non-Discrimination. We will never charge you more or serve you less for exercising a privacy right.

How to Exercise a Right

Email admin@pacificmedicallegal.com under the subject line "Privacy Request", or call (310) 499-4339. Name the right you are exercising and give us enough detail to locate your record. We verify you against what we already hold and reply to the address of record, confirming receipt within ten business days and answering within forty-five calendar days, extendable once. An authorized agent may submit a request with your written permission.

9. Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control

Do Not Track remains an older browser header with no agreed standard. This site never tracks visitors across other sites for advertising, so we already do for everyone what that signal asks. Global Privacy Control, a newer signal, counts under California law as a valid opt-out of sale or sharing, and we honor that signal as binding whenever a browser sends one.

10. Children's Privacy

This website addresses adults doing business with us, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under sixteen through these pages. Case material about a minor stays with the physician as protected health information, never collected through these pages. Should you believe a child submitted a form here, contact us and we will delete the entry.

11. Breach Notification

Unauthorized access, use, or disclosure of records we hold starts a fixed sequence. When an alert reaches us, we contain the exposure, assess the scope and the records touched, notify the people and agencies the law names, and document our findings and corrective steps.

• Affected Individuals. Where California law requires notice, we notify without unreasonable delay, describing what happened and what you can do.
• California Authorities. Where the number of affected residents meets the statutory threshold, we submit a sample notice to the Attorney General.
• Health Information. Notification follows the HIPAA Breach Notification Rule and California law. As a business associate, we notify the covered entity promptly.
• Contractual Notice. Where an agreement sets a shorter notice period than the law, we follow the shorter one.

12. Third-Party Links

This site links to material we do not control, including state agency and professional pages. Those destinations keep their own privacy practices, and this policy stops at our boundary. A vendor delivering part of our service counts as a service provider under section 5 rather than a third-party link.

13. Changes

We update this policy as our practices, our vendors, or the law change, and post the revised version here under a new effective date. For a material change, one that expands how we use information or reduces a right described here, we also notify clients by email. Changes take effect prospectively.

14. Contact Us

Questions, privacy requests, and concerns go to the same place.

Pacific MedicoLegal
3101 Ocean Park Blvd, Ste 200 #687
Santa Monica, CA 90405
Email: admin@pacificmedicallegal.com
Phone: (310) 499-4339
Fax: (310) 499-4339

For a question about a specific evaluation, cite the claim or case number rather than clinical detail.