Privacy Policy

Who we are

Niwa Therapy Centre is a management and facilitation company. We do not provide psychotherapy. We connect adults seeking psychotherapy with independently regulated clinicians in Ontario, and we provide the administrative services that make that work — scheduling, billing, referral coordination, and support.

Who provides your therapy

Your therapy is provided by a clinician registered with and regulated by the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario (CRPO). That clinician is independently responsible for their professional judgment, your clinical care, their documentation, and their regulatory obligations.

Who holds your clinical record

The regulated clinician who provides your psychotherapy is intended to act as the Health Information Custodian responsible for your clinical record under Ontario’s Personal Health Information Protection Act, 2004 (PHIPA). Niwa Therapy Centre provides administrative and management services and may handle limited personal health information as an authorized agent of the clinician, for purposes such as scheduling, billing, referral coordination, and other administrative support.

Niwa’s administrative personnel do not have routine access to psychotherapy session notes.

Our administrative data practices are governed by the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and, where applicable, PHIPA in our capacity as agent.

What Niwa collects and holds directly

Administrative and commercial data — what we need to connect you with a clinician and manage the business relationship:

• Name, email address, phone number
• Preferred appointment times and scheduling information
• Payment and billing information. Niwa may collect payments on behalf of clinicians. Card payments are processed through our payment provider; we do not store card numbers.
• Communications with us about booking, fees, or administrative matters
• Information you submit through our website contact or booking forms

This data is governed by PIPEDA. Niwa Therapy Centre is responsible for it.

What your clinician collects and holds

Once a therapeutic relationship begins, your clinician collects and holds clinical information as the health information custodian:

• Your reason for seeking therapy, history, and clinical goals
• Session notes and treatment records
• Clinical correspondence, including referral information shared with your consent
• Insurance or program coverage details relevant to billing your sessions (such as NIHB or IFHP information)

Niwa does not access, control, or hold this clinical information except in its role as administrative agent — for example, to process billing on the clinician’s behalf.

Why information is collected

To book appointments, process payments, communicate with you about your sessions, and operate the service. Clinical information is collected by your clinician to provide your care and to meet CRPO record-keeping obligations.

We do not sell your information. We do not use it for advertising.

Consent

We collect and use your administrative information with your consent, implied from your use of our booking and communication systems.

For clinical information, consent is managed by your clinician according to their obligations under PHIPA and CRPO standards. Your clinician will discuss consent — including its limits — at the start of therapy.

Referral confirmations

If someone referred you to us — a physician, lawyer, or community organization — we will not confirm to them that you attended unless you have given express written consent at intake. That consent is part of your clinician’s intake process, it names who may be told, and you may withdraw it at any time.

You may also limit what is shared, including instructing that certain information not be disclosed to other health care providers (“lock-box”). Where that prevents a disclosure someone has asked for, they will be told only that we were unable to disclose — not what was withheld.

When information may be shared without consent

For clinical information, your clinician may be required by law to share information without consent. They will explain these limits at the start of therapy. They include:

• Significant risk of serious bodily harm to you or another person
• Reasonable grounds to suspect a child under 16 may need protection
• A court order, subpoena, or summons
• A CRPO regulatory investigation
• Reporting of sexual abuse by a regulated health professional, as required by law

For administrative information, we may share it where required by law, or with contracted service providers who are bound to keep it confidential.

Service providers and where information is stored

Clinical records are held in Jane App, a Canadian practice-management platform, on encrypted servers in Canada.

Administrative information is held in the systems below. Some are operated by companies based outside Canada, which means limited information may be stored or processed in the United States, where it could be subject to foreign law:

We keep cross-border transfers to a minimum. Referral information received by email or fax is moved into the clinician’s records system and deleted from our administrative systems promptly.

Please do not send personal health information by email or text. Those channels are not secure, and we will invite you to use a secure method instead.

Cookies and website statistics

This website does not use cookies for analytics or advertising, does not use advertising or remarketing tools, and does not record your screen or what you type.

To understand which pages are useful and improve the site, we use Vercel Web Analytics, a statistics service provided by our website host. It does not use cookies, does not follow you across other websites, and is designed not to identify you. It records aggregated information only: the page viewed (without any search terms or other details added to the web address), the website that referred you, your country, and your browser, operating system, and device type. This information may be processed in the United States, where it could be subject to foreign law.

If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track signal, no statistics are recorded for your visit. Either way, you can use every part of this website.

How information is protected

Encryption in transit and at rest; individual accounts with multi-factor authentication; access limited to the people who need it; written agreements with our service providers; and secure, PHIPA-compliant video sessions.

How long information is kept

CRPO requires clinical records to be retained for at least ten years after your last clinical interaction. That obligation rests with your clinician. Niwa’s administrative records are kept as long as the business relationship requires and as tax law demands, then securely deleted.

Accessing or correcting your information

Your clinical record: contact your treating clinician directly. As the health information custodian, they are responsible for access and correction requests under PHIPA ss. 52–55, and must respond within 30 days. If you are unsatisfied with their response, you may complain to the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario.

Your administrative information held by Niwa: contact our Privacy Contact Person at privacy@niwatherapy.com. We will confirm what we hold, correct inaccuracies, or delete it where we are not legally required to keep it.

Privacy Contact Person

Questions, requests, and complaints about information held by Niwa Therapy Centre can be sent to our Privacy Contact Person at privacy@niwatherapy.com.

Complaints

Speak to us first — most issues are resolved quickly.

Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario
2 Bloor Street East, Suite 1400, Toronto, ON M4W 1A8
1-800-387-0073 · ipc.on.ca

Concerns about a clinician’s professional conduct: College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario
375 University Avenue, Suite 803, Toronto, ON M5G 2J5
416-479-4330 · 1-844-712-1364 · crpo.ca