Privacy Policy

General privacy statement regarding personal information

Your privacy is very important to us, and we are committed to protecting it. We have established this policy and are posting it here to let you know that we protect your privacy by carefully and appropriately handling the information we receive from you.

We recommend that you read this policy carefully before using our website or the Member Portal (collectively “the Site”) or any other method, such as our SMS Service, to communicate with, or send any information to, us. If you do not intend to, or cannot, comply with this policy and our Terms and Conditions of Use, you may not enter, access, or otherwise use this website or the Member Portal and should not send us any personal information through them or our SMS Service.

Your use of the Site and our SMS Service is conditioned upon your prior acceptance of the terms and conditions of this policy and it is a part of, and is hereby incorporated by reference in, our Terms and Conditions of Use.

This Privacy Policy and our Terms and Conditions of Use constitute the complete agreement between you and CHM with respect to your use of the Site and our SMS Service and supersede any prior agreements or communications between us. CHM reserves the right to modify this Privacy Policy without prior notice, but, when we do so, we will post any revised Privacy Policy to the Site. You should review our Privacy Policy at least every thirty (30) days. Your continued use of this website or the SMS Service subsequent to our notice of modification of this Privacy Policy constitutes your acceptance of, and agreement to, that modified Privacy Policy.

Collection and retention of your personal, and other sensitive, information

Christian Healthcare Ministries (CHM) does not share, sell, or rent your personal information to third parties for their marketing purposes. We only collect personal information from you that you voluntarily supply to us that is necessary to provide you with the service(s) you request from us. By providing your personal information, you agree that we may use it to provide the service(s) you have requested or contact you in the event that we cannot provide the service(s) requested.

Portions of the Site, or your subscription to our SMS Service, contain functions for collecting your personal information, which can include your name, email address, home or work address and telephone/cellular number, as well as the history of your access to the Site and our SMS Service. We may also collect anonymous demographic data that is not unique to you, which can include your ZIP code, age, gender, preferences, and interests. We may also collect and track non-personally identifiable data about you, including, but not limited to, how you use certain features of the Site or our SMS Service, the general regions from which visitors to the Site or users of our SMS Service are contacting us and how many people are visiting the Site or using our SMS Service at or over any given time. We use analytics tools and other third party technologies (such as Google Analytics and Google AdWords) to obtain this anonymous information.

We reserve the right to compile, save, use within the scope of our ministry, and analyze any and all of the data we collect. We may provide aggregated statistics about users (which includes you) to third party organizations, but when we do so that information will be aggregated so that users remain anonymous.

Third party organizations who collect information on the Site may combine this information with information they have independently gathered from other websites, services and applications relating to your activity on those other websites, services or applications. They may collect and use this information in accordance with their own privacy policies.

Important Definitions: 

Personal Information refers to all information that you submit to us on a voluntary basis that identifies you as a unique individual. This includes your name, contact information such as your e-mail address, company name, address, and phone number, and other information about you or your organization. It can also include information about any transactions, both free and paid, that you enter into on the Site, and information about you that can be found on the internet, such as from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google, or information that we acquire from various service providers.

Personal Information also includes Navigational Information or Payment Information where such information can directly or indirectly identify you.

Navigational Information refers to information we obtain when you visit the Site about your computer and includes other information such as your IP address, geographical location, type of browser you use, referral source, length of visits and pages you view.

Payment Information includes information that we collect and process from you when you apply for membership, including credit card numbers and billing information, for which we use third party PCI-compliant service providers. Except for this, and what is noted in the following paragraph, we do not collect Sensitive Information from you.

Sensitive Information refers to your credit or debit card numbers, personal financial account numbers and information, Social Security number, passport number, driver’s license number and all other similar personal identifiers. It includes data on your racial or ethnic origin, physical or mental health condition or information, or other employment, financial or health information. In order to process your membership application and requests for medical bill sharing through the Member Portal, and only for those purposes, we do collect Sensitive Information related to your physical and mental health.

Log Files

When you view content on the Site that we have posted, we automatically collect data about your computer and its software. You should expect this information to include your IP address, type of browser, domain name(s), internet service provider (ISP), the files you view on our Site (e.g., HTML pages, graphics, etc.), operating system, clickstream data, access times and the addresses of referring websites. We use this information to obtain and analyze general statistics regarding visitors’ use of the Site. For these purposes, we may link this automatically-collected data to other Personal Information such as your name, email address, address, and telephone number.

Information we collect from third parties

We may occasionally receive Personal Information about you from third party sources, which includes partners with whom we offer co-branded services or engage in joint marketing activities, and other sources such as social media websites.

Information About Children

The Site and our SMS Service is not meant for or targeted at children under the age of 16, and we do not knowingly or intentionally collect personal information about children under 16, except through the Member Portal in conjunction with the processing of applications for membership and requests for the sharing of medical bills. If you believe that we have collected personal information about a child under 16 other than for these purposes, please contact us at [email protected], so that we may delete the information.

Privacy of medical bills and other health information 

When you submit medical bills to us for sharing, you will be asked to also submit a form authorizing your health care provider(s) to furnish your medical information to us so that we can process those medical bills for sharing. This form is compliant with the federal law (HIPAA) that protects patient information. Once CHM receives that information, it is kept in a secure location and is only accessed by employees who need that information in order to process your bills for sharing. This also applies to health information you send to us as part of the application for membership. We cannot be held liable for compromised security while any of your health information or medical bills are in transit from anyone to us. (As a reminder to you: Do NOT send Sensitive Information via email, as that method of transmission is NOT secure.)

How we use your information 

We may use your Personal Information for several purposes, including to: 

  • send information to you regarding changes to our Terms and Conditions of Use, Privacy Policy (including the Cookie Policy), and other legal agreements;
  • promote our ministry to you and share promotional and informational content with you in accordance with your communication preferences;
  • provide you with information or services you request from us, or we think may be of interest to you relating to our business via means such as email or post, for example;
  • send you communications regarding legislation or regulations potentially impacting your membership, the Refer-a-Friend referral program, Heartfelt Magazine, and other program-related information;
  • process applications, medical bills and other documents you submit to us;
  • improve your browsing experience via personalization of the Site
  • resolve disputes between you and us;
  • comply with laws and regulations;
  • investigate and help prevent prohibited activities and abuse, and enforce our Terms and Condition of Use;
  • facilitate and improve your use of, and the operation of, our services to you;
  • analyze trends and statistics as part of our marketing, research, and development efforts;
  • deliver targeted service updates;
  • provide other companies with aggregated and personally de-identified statistical information about our users; contact you on behalf of external business partners about a particular offering that may be of interest to you, as permitted by HIPAA; and
  • verify information with third parties.
  • contact you about billing, account management, and other administrative matters.

Lastly, we may use your information as otherwise necessary or useful for us to conduct our ministry, so long as such use is permitted by law.

If you are, or become, an inactive member of CHM, we may retain your member records, payment and credit card information, Protected Health Information (as defined in HIPAA) and other personal information for up to thirteen (13) months, and your marketing information for up to five (5) years, after you are no longer active.

When we share your information 

We will share your name, email address, home or work address and telephone/cellular number only with third parties as permitted under the terms of our HIPAA Notice of Privacy Practices. These third parties have confidentiality agreements with us and are prohibited from using this information except to provide services to you, and must do so in compliance with HIPAA and other privacy laws.

Additionally, we may disclose your Personal Information when required by law, rule, or regulation. We may also disclose this information to unrelated parties in special cases when we have a reasonable belief that such disclosure is necessary to identify, contact or bring legal action against a person or persons who may be causing injury to, or interfering with, any of our rights or property (including the Site), other computer users accessing the Site or our SMS Service, or any third party. In addition, we may disclose information about persons and organizations who access the Site or our SMS Service to law enforcement agencies, judicial or government authorities or to other individuals or entities in compliance with subpoenas, court orders or other legal processes.

Finally, in the event that we undergo a business transition, such as a merger, an acquisition by another ministry or organization, or any other sale or transfer of all or a portion of our assets, your and other users’ personal information will, in most cases, be part of the assets that we transfer. If, as a result of said business transition, your Personal Information will be used in a manner different from what we stated at the time of collection, we will give you the option of continuing to share the information consistent with this Privacy Policy. Nothing in this Privacy Policy shall be interpreted to interfere with our ability to transfer all or part of our business and/or assets (including the Site) for any purposes, without limitation.

Contractors of CHM who have access to Personal Information are required to protect this information in a manner that is consistent with this Privacy Policy by, for example, not using the information for any purpose other than to carry out the services they are performing for us.

Links to third party websites 

As a convenience to users of the Site, it contains links to other websites that we believe offer useful information to their users. When you leave the Site you should be aware that you may be providing information to those linked websites. Such links may constitute an endorsement by CHM of the services offered by those websites, but we do not necessarily endorse all of the content displayed therein, or all of the persons, services or entities associated therewith. This Privacy Policy does not apply to those websites. You should contact those websites directly, or review them, for information on their privacy policies, confidentiality agreements, and data collection/distribution procedures. We encourage visitors to the Site to read and familiarize themselves with the privacy policies maintained by any other website they visit so that they can understand how that website may collect, use and share their information.

Cookies and other helpful technology 

Cookies are small bits of information that are stored on your computer that keep track of your activities on the Site, save your password or deliver content specific to your interests. Cookies help establish a user session and allow our server to correctly provide Site visitors with the appropriate information, advertisements and services.

A cookie can contain information, such as a user ID, that the Site uses to track the pages you’ve visited; but the only Personal Information a cookie can contain is the information you provide. If you prefer, you can refuse to utilize cookies by turning them off in your browser. If you decide to decline the use of cookies, you may not be able to fully utilize the Site or access all of the services we provide through the Site. The Site may collect some information (such as your IP address) to help diagnose problems with our server and to administer the Site. Your IP address and/or the domains from which you visit us may also be used to help us identify you and any activity in which you engage.

The Site is also configured to collect information through technology and uses that information to make itself more interesting and useful to you. We normally do not combine this type of information with Personal Information; however, we may combine it with Personal Information to identify a visitor in order to enforce compliance with our Terms of Use, or to protect the Site, our interests and reputation, our guests, and/or others. We may also collect demographic and profile data at the Site; which we may use to tailor your experience at the Site, showing you content that we think you might be interested in, and displaying the content according to your preferences.

You should note that linked third party non-CHM websites may also employ cookies, but please keep in mind that we cannot control the use of cookies by these websites. It is also important for you to remember that when you use a link on the Site to jump to another website, that website may be able to recognize that you have come from the Site. If you prefer that non-CHM websites that we link to on the Site not know that you have been on the Site, we recommend that you do not use the links we provide on the Site. If you have questions about how any third party website uses cookies, you should contact that third party directly.

Pixel Tags/Web Beacons

Pixel tags (also known as “Web beacons”, “page tags”, or other names) are objects, such as images, that may be embedded in a web page. When they are loaded, the page has been accessed. Pixel tags are commonly used in combination with cookies to identify a unique visitor. These tags provide us with data telling us how the Site is being used, and also help us gauge the effectiveness of our advertising and furnish you with information that provides the best possible user experience to you.

How we work together to keep your information secure

Christian Healthcare Ministries treats your data the way you do: as an asset to be protected against loss and unauthorized access. We employ security techniques such as firewalls, data encryption, and other security measures to protect such data from unauthorized access by users inside and outside CHM. For example, you may access your online Member Portal only if you have registered for that access. CHM encrypts your personal information such as user IDs, passwords, and account information when sent over the Internet. Any information we send to you is scrambled en route and decoded once it reaches your browser. However, since “perfect security” does not exist, by using the Site or our SMS Service you agree that we are not liable for security infringements committed by unauthorized users outside CHM.

If you suspect improper use of, or access to, your information in conjunction with your use of the Site or our SMS Service, please immediately call the CHM Member Services department at 1-800-791-6225.

Opting in/out or updating your information

If you are a member, we may send certain electronic and SMS communications to you, such as newsletters, notifications, and other communications about our ministry. Email communications that are considered transactional (such as communications regarding legislation or regulations that may impact your membership, the Refer-a-Friend referral program, Heartfelt Magazine, and other program-related information) contain information that is essential to your membership, and you are unable to opt out of them.

In regard to our SMS Service, a mobile user might opt in by:

  • Entering a phone number online,
  • Sending a Mobile Originating (MO) message containing a marketing or advertising keyword,
  • Filling out a paper form that includes their phone number, or

Signing up verbally through a member services or member enrollment representative. To opt out of any specific electronic marketing communication, follow the “unsubscribe” instructions associated with that communication. To opt out of any specific SMS communication, or to cancel the Service, text STOP to 888-327-5246 associated with that communication.  After you send the SMS message “STOP” to us, we will send you an SMS message to confirm that you have been unsubscribed. After that, you will no longer receive SMS messages from us. If you want to join again, just sign up as you did the first time, and we will start sending SMS messages to you again.

If you have submitted Personal Information through the Site or our SMS Service, you are entitled to request a restriction on the use and disclosure of your information.

To opt out of certain types of anonymous data collection, you can:

  • Adjust your browser’s Google Ad settings to opt out of all advertising that is based on your demographic characteristics and interests on Google advertising networks
  • Download a Google browser add-on that prevents data collection by Google Analytics
  • Set your advertising preferences to allow only ad networks that are members of the National Advertising Initiative
  • Adjust your browser settings to reject cookies. Directions can be found in the Privacy and Security settings in the Help function of all major browsers. Most users choose to accept cookies but, if you choose to disable your cookies and are a member of CHM, we want to alert you that this may prevent your access to your Personal Information on chministries.org.

As a member, you also have the ability to request access to your protected health information that we hold and further request that we correct or amend that information. As a reminder, if you choose to contact us via email or SMS, any email or SMS that you send or receive on an organization’s email or SMS system may be the property of that organization. This means that that organization may have the ability to review your personal information sent via its email or SMS system.

Use of our SMS Service is prohibited by anyone who is not a resident of the United States.

You may bring any additional questions or concerns regarding our SMS Service to us, or obtain a list of supported keywords, at any time by texting “HELP” to 888-327-5246.

SMS Terms of Service

Use of the CHM text message-based services (the “SMS Service”) is subject to the following Terms of Service. These terms constitute a legal agreement (the “Agreement”). Please read them carefully.

CHM will allow several different opportunities, such as entering a phone number online, to opt-in to our SMS Service.  The opt-in received will be ‘Text JOIN to 888-327-5246 to sign up to receive Notifications from CHM.

You can cancel our SMS Service at any time. Just text “STOP” to 888-327-5246. After you send the SMS message “STOP” to us, we will send you an SMS message to confirm that you have been unsubscribed. After this, you will no longer receive SMS messages from us. If you want to join again, just sign up as you did the first time, and we will start sending SMS messages to you again.

As always, message and data rates may apply for any messages sent to you from us and to us from you, and CHM is not liable for the cost of any such messages. You will receive recurring messages. If you have any questions about your text plan or data plan, it is best to contact your wireless provider. For all questions about the Service provided by this dedicated number, you can send an email to [email protected].

You understand that anyone with access to your mobile phone may be able to view the messages you receive when using our SMS Service, and you agree that CHM will not be liable to you if this occurs. 

You understand that you are not required to consent to our SMS Service to receive any other services from CHM. 

By agreeing to these Terms of Service and providing us with your mobile phone number when you opt in to our SMS Service, you authorize CHM to contact you by text message at your mobile phone number using an automatic telephone dialing system or device, or any other computer assisted technology as applicable. 

California Privacy Rights 

This section applies only to California members of CHM and describes how we collect, use, and share California members’ Personal Information and their rights in this process. If this section applies to you and you are unable to access it because of a disability or physical or mental impairment, please contact us and we will supply you with this information in a format that you can access. 

As used in this section “Personal Information” has the meaning specified in the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”).

How we collect, use, and share your personal information 

We may have collected the following statutory categories of Personal Information in the past twelve (12) months: 

  • Identifiers, such as names, e-mail addresses, mailing addresses, and phone numbers. If we collected this information, we did so directly from you or from third party sources. 
  • Commercial information. If we collected this information, we did so directly from you. 
  • Internet or network information, such as browsing and search history. If we did so, we collected this information directly from your device. 
  • Geolocation data, such as IP addresses. If we did so, we collected this information from your device. 
  • Financial information, such as Payment Information or financial account numbers in the process of providing you with a membership. If we did so, you provided this information to us. 
  • Inferences. 
  • Other Personal Information, if you interacted with us online, by telephone or mail in the context of receiving help through our support channels; participation in customer surveys or contests; or in providing membership services. 

The business and commercial purposes for which we may have collected this information, and the categories of third parties to whom we may “disclose” this information for a business purpose, are described above in this policy. 

Your California Rights 

You have certain rights regarding the Personal Information we collect or maintain about you. Please note that these rights are not absolute, and there may be cases in which we decline to comply with your request when permitted to do so by law. 

Your Right of Access means that you have the right to request that we disclose to you what Personal Information we have collected from you, and used or disclosed, in the past 12 months. 

Your Right of Deletion means that you have the right to request that we delete your Personal Information collected or maintained by us, subject to certain exceptions. 

Your Right to Non-discrimination means that you will not receive any discriminatory treatment from us when you choose to exercise any of your privacy rights. 

We do not sell anyone’s Personal Information to third parties (pursuant to California Civil Code §§ 1798.100–1798.199, also known as the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018).  

How to exercise your California Rights 

You may exercise these rights yourself or you may authorize an agent or attorney to exercise these rights on your behalf. Please note that, to protect your Personal Information, we will verify your identity by a method of our choice. We may also request that your authorized agent or attorney provide us with written authorization from you to make requests on your behalf, and we may also choose to verify that authorized agent’s or attorney’s identity before taking any action concerning your Personal Information. 

Contact us 

If you have questions or concerns regarding your privacy or this Privacy Policy, you should contact us utilizing the information shown on the Contact Page of the Site.