Privacy Policy - Ascend Vision Partners

Effective Date: 01/01/2025

Who We Are Our website address is: https://ascendvision.com

Introduction Ascend Vision Partners, Southeastern Eye Care Management LLC, Thurmond Eye Associates PLLC, and all affiliated practices and surgery centers ("we," "us," "our") are committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and safeguard your information when you visit our website.

Information We Collect When you visit our website, we may collect the following types of information:

Personal Information: Name, email address, phone number, mailing address, appointment details, and any other information voluntarily provided through contact forms, appointment scheduling, or other website interactions.
Automatically Collected Information: IP address, browser type, operating system, referring URLs, and other technical data collected through cookies and tracking technologies.

Comments When visitors leave comments on the site, we collect the data shown in the comments form, as well as the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help with spam detection.

An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Media If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

How We Use Your Information We use the collected information for the following purposes:

To schedule and manage appointments
To communicate with you via email, SMS, or postal mail regarding appointments, services, or updates
To provide customer support
To improve our website, services, and patient experience
To comply with legal and regulatory obligations

Cookies If you leave a comment on our site, you may opt-in to saving your name, email address, and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select "Remember Me," your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after one day.

Embedded Content from Other Websites Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g., videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Who We Share Your Data With If you request a password reset, your IP address will be included in the reset email.

We do not sell, rent, or lease your personal information to third parties. However, we may share your data with trusted partners for the following purposes:

Service Providers: We may share information with vendors who assist us with services such as statistical analysis, email and SMS communication, postal mail delivery, appointment reminders, and customer support.
Legal Compliance: If required by law or legal process, we may disclose information to law enforcement, regulatory authorities, or other governmental agencies.
Business Transfers: In the event of a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, your information may be transferred as part of the transaction.

How Long We Retain Your Data If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

What Rights You Have Over Your Data If you have an account on this site or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

Where Your Data is Sent Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.

Data Security We implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect your personal information from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure. However, no internet-based system can be 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

Third-Party Links Our website may contain links to third-party websites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of these external sites and encourage you to review their policies before providing any personal information.

This Practice does not sell, rent, or lease its customer lists or mobile opt-in data to third parties for marketing purposes. However, we may share your data with trusted partners to assist with services such as statistical analysis, email and SMS communication, postal mail regarding your appointments, customer support, and deliveries. All third-party partners are strictly prohibited from using your personal information and/or mobile opt-in information for any purpose other than providing these services, and they are required to maintain its confidentiality.

For SMS communications, you can opt out of messages at any time by replying STOP to opt out of future messages from Ascend Vision Partners, HELP for more information, or call us at 1-833-287-6525. Message frequency may vary, and standard message and data rates may apply. You can review our privacy policy on our website. We maintain consent of our patients in our practice management system.

Your Rights and Choices Depending on applicable laws, you may have rights regarding your personal information, including:

Accessing, correcting, or deleting your data
Opting out of marketing communications
Restricting data processing
Withdrawing consent (where applicable)

To exercise these rights, please contact us using the information provided below.

Changes to This Privacy Policy We may update this Privacy Policy periodically. Any changes will be posted on this page with an updated effective date.

Contact Us If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or how your information is handled, please contact us at:

Ascend Vision Partners
1925 N. Mills Avenue
Orlando, Fl 32803

1-833-287-6525