Privacy Policy

Notice of Privacy Practices

Johnny U. Franco, M.D., P.A.

This notice describes how medical information about you may be used and disclosed and how you can get access to this information.
Please review it carefully.

Your Information. Your Rights. Our Responsibilities.

Your Rights

Get an electronic or paper copy of your medical record

• You can ask to see or get an electronic or paper copy of your medical record and other health information we have about you. Ask us how to do this.
• We will provide a copy or a summary of your health information, usually within 30 days of your request. We may charge a reasonable, cost-based fee.

Ask us to correct your medical record

• You can ask us to correct health information about you that you think is incorrect or incomplete. Ask us how to do this.
• We may say “no” to your request, but we’ll tell you why in writing within 60 days.

Request confidential communications

• You can ask us to contact you in a specific way (for example, home or office phone) or to send mail to a different address.
• We will say “yes” to all reasonable requests.

Ask us to limit what we use or share

• You can ask us not to use or share certain health information for treatment, payment, or our operations.
• We are not required to agree to your request, and we may say “no” if it would affect your care.
• If you pay for a service or health care item out-of-pocket in full, you can ask us not to share that information for the purpose of payment or our operations with your health insurer.
• We will say “yes” unless a law requires us to share that information.

Get a list of those with whom we’ve shared information

• You can ask for a list (accounting) of the times we’ve shared your health information for six years prior to the date you ask, who we shared it with, and why.
• We will include all the disclosures except for those about treatment, payment, and health care operations, and certain other disclosures (such as any you asked us to make). We’ll provide one accounting a year for free but will charge a reasonable, cost-based fee if you ask for another one within 12 months.

Get a copy of this privacy notice

• You can ask for a paper copy of this notice at any time, even if you have agreed to receive the notice electronically. We will provide you with a paper copy promptly.

Choose someone to act for you

• If you have given someone medical power of attorney or if someone is your legal guardian, that person can exercise your rights and make choices about your health information.
• We will make sure the person has this authority and can act for you before we take any action.

File a complaint if you feel your rights are violated

• You can complain if you feel we have violated your rights by contacting us using the information on the back page.
• You can file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights by sending a letter to:
  200 Independence Avenue, S.W., Washington, D.C. 20201,
  calling 1-877-696-6775, or visiting www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/complaints.
• We will not retaliate against you for filing a complaint.

Your Choices

For certain health information, you can tell us your choices about what we share.
If you have a clear preference for how we share your information in the situations described below, talk to us. Tell us what you want us to do, and we will follow your instructions.

In these cases, you have both the right and choice to tell us to:

• Share information with your family, close friends, or others involved in your care
• Share information in a disaster relief situation
• Include your information in a hospital directory

If you are not able to tell us your preference, for example if you are unconscious, we may go ahead and share your information if we believe it is in your best interest. We may also share your information when needed to lessen a serious and imminent threat to health or safety.

In these cases we never share your information unless you give us written permission:

• Marketing purposes
• Sale of your information
• Most sharing of psychotherapy notes

In the case of fundraising:

• We may contact you for fundraising efforts, but you can tell us not to contact you again.

Our Uses and Disclosures

We typically use or share your health information in the following ways:

Treat you

• We can use your health information and share it with other professionals who are treating you.
  Example: A doctor treating you for an injury asks another doctor about your overall health condition.

Run our organization

• We can use and share your health information to run our practice, improve your care, and contact you when necessary.
  Example: We use health information about you to manage your treatment and services.

Bill for your services

• We can use and share your health information to bill and get payment from health plans or other entities.
  Example: We give information about you to your health insurance plan so it will pay for your services.

How else can we use or share your health information?

We are allowed or required to share your information in other ways—usually in ways that contribute to the public good, such as public health and research.
We have to meet many conditions in the law before we can share your information for these purposes. For more information, see: www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/understanding/consumers/index.html

Help with public health and safety issues
We can share health information about you for certain situations such as:

• Preventing disease
• Helping with product recalls
• Reporting adverse reactions to medications
• Reporting suspected abuse, neglect, or domestic violence
• Preventing or reducing a serious threat to anyone’s health or safety

Do research

• We can use or share your information for health research.

Comply with the law

• We will share information about you if state or federal laws require it, including with the Department of Health and Human Services if it wants to see that we’re complying with federal privacy law.

Respond to organ and tissue donation requests

• We can share health information about you with organ procurement organizations.

Work with a medical examiner or funeral director

• We can share health information with a coroner, medical examiner, or funeral director when an individual dies.

Address workers’ compensation, law enforcement, and other government requests
We can use or share health information about you:

• For workers’ compensation claims
• For law enforcement purposes or with a law enforcement official
• With health oversight agencies for activities authorized by law
• For special government functions such as military, national security, and presidential protective services

Respond to lawsuits and legal actions

• We can share health information about you in response to a court or administrative order, or in response to a subpoena.

Additional Practice Information

• We do not create or maintain a hospital directory or psychotherapy notes at this practice.
• We do not provide or retain substance abuse treatment records, and therefore do not disclose such information.
• We do not disclose your health information to employers, marketing companies, or third parties without your written authorization.
• We will never share your before-and-after photos, treatment details, or other identifiable medical information for promotional use without your explicit, signed consent.
• Texas law does not impose additional privacy restrictions beyond HIPAA for the services provided at this practice.
• We do not currently offer access to health records via the Blue Button protocol.

Our Responsibilities

• We are required by law to maintain the privacy and security of your protected health information.
• We will let you know promptly if a breach occurs that may have compromised the privacy or security of your information.
• We must follow the duties and privacy practices described in this notice and give you a copy of it.
• We will not use or share your information other than as described here unless you tell us we can in writing. If you tell us we can, you may change your mind at any time. Let us know in writing if you change your mind.

For more information, see: www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/understanding/consumers/noticepp.html

Changes to the Terms of This Notice

We can change the terms of this notice, and the changes will apply to all information we have about you. The new notice will be available upon request, in our office, and on our website.

This Notice of Privacy Practices applies to the following organizations.
This Notice of Privacy Practices applies solely to Austin Plastic Surgeon and its affiliated providers at all practice locations. We are not part of an Organized Health Care Arrangement (OHCA) and do not share protected health information under a joint HIPAA notice with outside entities.

Practice Name: Austin Plastic Surgeon
Locations: Austin, West Lake Hills, Round Rock, and San Antonio
Primary Address: 6818 Austin Center Blvd, Suite 206, Austin, TX 78731
Website: www.austinplasticsurgeon.com
Privacy Contact Email: [email protected]
Phone: (512) 559-1376

This privacy policy discloses the privacy practices for ( www.austinplasticsurgeon.com ). This privacy policy applies solely to information collected by this web site. It will notify you of the following:

1. What personally identifiable information is collected from you through the web site, how it is used and with whom it may be shared.
2. What choices are available to you regarding the use of your data.
3. The security procedures in place to protect the misuse of your information.
4. How you can correct any inaccuracies in the information.

Information Collection, Use, and Sharing

We are the sole owners of the information collected on this site.

We may collect, store and use the following kinds of personal information:

1. Information about your computer and about your visits to and use of this website (including your IP address, geographical location, browser type and version, operating system, referral source, length of visit, page views, website navigation);
2. Information relating to any transactions carried out between you and us on or in relation to this website, including information relating to any purchases you make of our goods or services;
3. Information that you provide to us for the purpose of registering with us;
4. Information that you provide to us for the purpose of subscribing to our website services, email notifications and/or newsletters; and
5. Any other information that you choose to send to us.

Before you disclose to us the personal information of another person, you must obtain that person’s consent to both the disclosure and the processing of that personal information in accordance with the terms of this privacy policy.

We will use your information to respond to you, regarding the reason you contacted us. We may share your information with another third party outside of our organization, if necessary to fulfill your request (e.g. to ship an order) or to facilitate our organization in managing our website.

Unless you ask us not to, we may contact you via email in the future to tell you about specials, or new products or services.

Your Access to and Control Over Information

You may opt out of any future contacts from us at any time. You can do the following at any time by contacting us via the email address or phone number given on our website:

1. See what data we have about you, if any.
2. Change/correct any data we have about you.
3. Have us delete any data we have about you.
4. Express any concern you have about our use of your data.

Security

We will take reasonable technical and organizational precautions to prevent the loss, misuse or alteration of your personal information.

We will store all the personal information you provide on our secure (password and firewall-protected) servers.

Only employees who need the information to perform a specific job (for example, billing or customer service) are granted access to personally identifiable information. The computers/servers in which we store personally identifiable information are kept in a secure environment.

Orders

We may accept orders and if we do we request information from you on our order form. To buy from us, you must provide contact information (like name and shipping address) and financial information (like credit card number, expiration date). This information is used for billing purposes and to fill your orders. If we have trouble processing an order, we’ll use this information to contact you.

Cookies

We use “cookies” on this site. A cookie is a piece of data stored on a site visitor’s hard drive to help us improve your access to our site and identify repeat visitors to our site. For instance, when we use a cookie to identify you, you would not have to log in a password more than once, thereby saving time while on our site. Cookies can also enable us to track and target the interests of our users to enhance the experience on our site.

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 have an account and you log in to this site, 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 1 day.

Some of our business partners may use cookies on our site (for example, advertisers). However, we have no access to or control over these cookies.

We do not honor the Do Not Track (DNT) web browser privacy preference at this time.

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.

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 tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Sharing

We share aggregated demographic information with our partners and advertisers. And:

We may use an outside shipping company to ship orders, and a credit card processing company to bill users for goods and services. These companies do not retain, share, store or use personally identifiable information for any secondary purposes beyond filling your order. And:

We may partner with another party to provide specific services. We will share names, or other contact information that is necessary for the third party to provide these services. These parties are not allowed to use personally identifiable information except for the purpose of providing these services.

Disclosures

We may disclose your personal information to any of our employees, officers, agents, suppliers or subcontractors insofar as reasonably necessary for the purposes set out in this privacy policy.

We may disclose your personal information to any member of our group of companies (this means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and all its subsidiaries) insofar as reasonably necessary for the purposes set out in this privacy policy.

In addition, we may disclose your personal information:

1. To the extent that we are required to do so by law;
2. In connection with any ongoing or prospective legal proceedings;
3. In order to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights (including providing information to others for the purposes of fraud prevention and reducing credit risk);
4. To the purchaser (or prospective purchaser) of any business or asset that we are (or are contemplating) selling; and
5. To any person who we reasonably believe may apply to a court or other competent authority for disclosure of that personal information where, in our reasonable opinion, such court or authority would be reasonably likely to order disclosure of that personal information.

Links

This web site contains links to other sites. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the content or privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of any other site that collects personally identifiable information.

Surveys & Contests

From time-to-time our site requests information via surveys or contests. Participation in these surveys or contests is completely voluntary and you may choose whether or not to participate and therefore disclose this information. Information requested may include contact information (such as name and shipping address), and demographic information (such as zip code, age level). Contact information will be used to notify the winners and award prizes. Survey information will be used for purposes of monitoring or improving the use and satisfaction of this site.

Updates

Our Privacy Policy may change from time to time and all updates will be posted on this page.

Effective: December 1, 2014

Last Updated: March 28th, 2025

If you feel that we are not abiding by this privacy policy, you should contact us immediately via the email address or phone number given on our website.