Privacy Policy

Walter is a home-care operations platform used by independent home-care agencies (each an “agency”). The agency that provides your care is the party responsible for the personal information about you that it enters into Walter; Walter Inc. (“Walter”, “we”) processes that information on the agency’s behalf as its service provider.

This policy is written to reflect Quebec’s Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector, as modernized by Law 25.

• Care recipients (clients): name, address, phone, emergency contacts, language, diagnosis, allergies, medications, care plan, routines, and visit records (notes, photos with consent, GPS at clock-in, a wellness check-in). This includes health information.
• Caregivers: name, contact details, credentials and their expiry, qualifications, shift history, and location at clock-in/out (for visit verification only).
• Family members: name and contact details, used to provide the family portal when the client has consented to information sharing.
• Agency owners/admins: account and billing details.

We use this information solely to operate the home-care service: scheduling and dispatching caregivers, verifying visits, recording care delivered, billing, and safety escalation. We collect a care recipient’s information with the consent obtained by the agency at intake, and we do not use it for any purpose incompatible with providing care. We do not sell personal information.

Personal and health information is kept only as long as necessary for the purposes above, then destroyed or anonymized. By default, health records are retained for seven (7) yearsfrom intake (an agency may configure a different period where law requires). Audit logs are retained longer (about ten years) so that access to, and erasure of, information remains accountable. Information past its retention window is flagged for the agency to erase.

• Right of access: you may ask the agency for a copy of the personal information it holds about you.
• Right to rectification: you may ask to correct inaccurate or incomplete information.
• Right to erasure (“right to be forgotten”): you may ask the agency to delete or anonymize your personal information when it is no longer needed. When honored, your record is anonymized: identifying and health details are cleared, family contacts are removed, and visit notes are stripped of personal detail (billing totals required by law are kept).
• Right to withdraw consent and the right to data portability where applicable.

To exercise any of these rights, contact your agency, or our privacy officer below.

If a confidentiality incident occurs that presents a risk of serious injury, the agency will promptly take steps to reduce the risk, will notify the Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec (CAI) and the individuals concerned where required, and will keep a register of incidents. Walter provides the tools to log, track, and report these incidents.

The person responsible for the protection of personal information is:

[PRIVACY OFFICER NAME]
[TITLE], [AGENCY / WALTER INC.]
[EMAIL ADDRESS] · [PHONE]
[MAILING ADDRESS]

You may also lodge a complaint with the Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec.

We may update this policy. Material changes will be communicated through the agency. The “last updated” date above reflects the current version.