Electronic monitoring

Dr. Bryant Medical Practice and MedSpa monitors employee use of its computers, its internet connection and its telephone line. New York Civil Rights Law section 52-c requires the practice to tell you that in writing, and to have you sign that you were told. This is that notice.

As that law is normally worded: monitoring of telephone conversations, electronic mail and internet access may occur at any and all times, and by any lawful means. What follows is the plain description of what actually happens today, so that you are not left guessing what that sentence covers.

1. The time clock on your computer

A single small Chrome add-on called Dr. Bryant Time & Care runs on the computer you work on. It does two jobs, and the second one is section 9: it keeps your working hours, and where the practice switches care minutes on it also offers to count chronic care and remote monitoring time. One add-on, one icon, one window. Once a minute it sends a short message to the practice about your hours. Here is everything that message and the practice server between them write down.

• Whether the computer is in use, idle, locked, or in use but outside the practice’s work programs. One of those four words.
• The time of the last key press or click. A time only. Not the key, not the click, not what was on screen.
• Whether the browser tab in front of you is one of the practice’s work programs. A yes or a no. The address itself is not stored.
• How many times you moved between pages or reloaded a page inside those work programs during a stretch of work. A number. Not a list of pages, and nothing at all about any other website.
• The time you check in and the time you check out, which you do yourself.
• The first time your computer was seen each day, even if that is before you check in.
• The internet address (the IP address) that the message came from. It is stored as it arrives, not disguised. See section 4.
• Whether that address is one of the practice’s own networks. A yes or a no, kept with each stretch of work and with your check in.
• When you first set the clock up: a label saying whether you set it up in the Chrome add-on or on the web page, a short description of the computer or browser you used (the platform name Chrome reports, or the first 40 characters of the browser identification line), and the six digit code you were given.
• The date and time you ticked the box that says you have read this notice, and the version number of the notice you were shown. That version is at the end of this document.

2. What the clock reads about your browsing, exactly

• It does not read any page. It contains no content scripts — no code of its own runs inside Practice Fusion, Weave, a patient chart or any other site — and it does not hold the Chrome scripting permission, which is the only way an add-on can inject code into a page it did not already ship a script for. What it reads about a page, it reads from outside it: the address of the front tab, and nothing else.
• It has no ability to capture your screen. There is no screenshot, no screen recording, no camera and no microphone, at any hour.
• What it reads is the address of the front tab, and only for the practice’s own three programs: Practice Fusion, Weave and the practice website. It reads that address to answer one question, is this a work program, yes or no. The yes or no is what is stored. The address is thrown away.
• There is one exception, and it is section 9. Where care minutes are switched on, the Practice Fusion address is read a second time to see which chart is open. That identifier is turned into a short code inside your browser, and the code is all the practice website receives. The chart identifier and a shortened address are kept on this computer so that the add-on’s own report can offer a link back to the chart. Neither is sent anywhere.
• Chrome does not hand it the address or the title of any other website. The add-on does not hold the tabs permission, which is what would reveal those, and it holds no standing access to any site except the practice’s own. Practice Fusion and Weave are asked for one at a time, from a button you press. So this limit is enforced by the browser and not by a promise.
• Being allowed to recognise those three programs does mean the add-on could, in principle, contact those three addresses. It is not written to, and it stores nothing from them. That is a statement about how it is built, not a limit the browser imposes, which is why it is written here plainly rather than left out.
• If the practice adds a fourth work program later, the add-on cannot start recognising it on its own. It asks you on screen, once, and Chrome shows its own permission box for that one address. If you say no, nothing happens except that the rule in section 3 about leaving the work programs is switched off for you.

3. How your hours are counted

You check in when you sit down and check out when you leave. Nothing is paid before you check in or after you check out. Pressing check in is what starts the day. Enrolling the add-on does not check you in, and neither does opening Chrome.

Between check in and check out the clock runs by itself. It stops after 15 minutes with no key press or click, and when it stops your time is counted up to your last real minute of work, not to the moment it noticed. It starts again by itself when you start working again. You do not have to press anything.

It also stops after 15 minutes in which you are using the computer but are not in any of the practice’s work programs. You are told on screen the moment that happens, and it starts again by itself as soon as you go back to one of them. This only applies while Chrome is the window in front of you. If you are on the telephone, with a patient, or in another program, nothing is assumed about you.

If time is missing or wrong, tell the practice. A manager corrects the record by hand. Every correction is stored with the name of the person who made it, what the record said before, what it says now, and the reason they gave. There is no form to fill in and no request to wait on, because that process was removed. The way to fix a timesheet is to tell somebody.

4. What is recorded when you are not working

The clock does not stop sending its once a minute message just because your shift ended. It sends whenever Chrome is running on that computer and the add-on is still installed. That includes evenings and weekends.

What is written down at those times:

• The time the practice last heard from that computer.
• The internet address the message came from. Only the most recent one is kept. Each message replaces the address stored before it, so there is no list of the places you have been, but the latest address is on the record. If you open Chrome at home, that is your home address.
• The first time the computer was seen on any given day.

What is not: no pay is counted, and nothing about what you were doing is recorded. The reason the first two are kept at all is section 3. If you work for twenty minutes before remembering to check in, the record that your computer was there is what lets a manager put those twenty minutes back instead of taking your word or refusing it.

If you would rather it did not report outside your hours, close Chrome when you finish, or switch the add-on off on the chrome://extensions page and switch it on again when you next work. Turning it off does not lose your set up and does not delete your hours. Since there is now one add-on rather than two, switching it off also stops care minutes until you switch it back on; neither half loses anything by being switched off.

5. Telephone calls

Calls to the practice telephone number are usually answered first by an automated assistant. When a call is then put through to a member of staff, both sides of that call are recorded, from the moment it is answered. That includes you, not only the patient. The caller hears a spoken line saying the call may be recorded before the transfer happens.

The recording is kept with the call record. A written transcript of it may be produced automatically, and a manager can read the transcript and play the recording from the practice call log. Treat any call on the practice line as recorded, because it is.

Your own mobile telephone is not monitored by any of this. Nothing described in this notice runs on a personal phone.

6. Email and internet access

The time clock does not read email. It does not read messages, it does not read attachments, and it does not scan what you send.

Practice email accounts and practice systems are the property of the practice, and as section 52-c requires this notice to state, monitoring of email and internet access may occur at any and all times and by any lawful means. Take that as it reads: a practice email account is not a private one.

7. What is never recorded

• No screenshots and no screen recording, at any time.
• No camera and no microphone by the time clock.
• No keystrokes, nothing you typed, no messages, no email contents.
• No patient information. The clock does not read Practice Fusion, Weave or any other program, and stores nothing out of any of them.
• No addresses, page titles, page contents or browsing history for any website outside the practice’s three work programs.
• Nothing here is sold, shared with anyone outside the practice, or used for advertising.

8. Where it is kept, who can see it, and for how long

• Everything described above is stored on servers run for Dr. Bryant Medical Practice and MedSpa and nowhere else, with one exception: the items listed at the end of section 9, which stay on this computer and are never sent.
• The owner and managers with timesheet access can see it. Reception and other staff cannot see anybody else’s record.
• You can see your own hours at any time, from the add-on or the web page, and they are the same numbers a manager sees.
• Timesheets, day records and corrections are kept for as long as New York requires payroll records to be kept, which is six years, and then deleted.
• The most recent internet address for each computer, and the short description of that computer, are kept for as long as that computer is enrolled. They are deleted when the enrolment is removed.
• Your acknowledgement of this notice is kept for as long as your employment record is kept.
• Call recordings and transcripts are kept with the call record. Ask the practice how long that is for.
• You may ask to see everything held about you at any time.

9. Care minutes, if the practice switches them on

Some of what the practice does for a patient is paid for by the minute rather than by the visit: chronic care management and remote patient monitoring. Those minutes have to be written down by somebody. This is the part of the add-on that offers to write them down for you, and it is off unless two separate things are true: the practice has care minutes switched on, and a practice key has been typed into this computer by hand.

Either one switches it off. The practice can turn care minutes off for every computer at once, and when it is off no question is asked and nothing is counted anywhere; the add-on checks every quarter of an hour in case it comes back on. Without the key on this computer, no chart can be recognised here at all.

None of this can change your hours or your pay. Answering the chart question does not start, stop or alter your working clock, and the care half of the add-on cannot write anything the hours half reads. That is not a promise about intentions: the two halves keep separate records on this computer, and scripts/care-hours-isolation-check.mjs and scripts/merge-crossings-test.mjs fail the build if care ever touches an hours figure.

Setting care minutes up on a computer asks you to tick its own box, and records the date you ticked it together with its own version number, which is not the version at the end of this document. It is a separate agreement to a separate thing, and you can be on the clock without it.

• When a Practice Fusion chart has been the window in front of you for about a minute, a small window asks one question: is this time Chronic Care Management, Remote Patient Monitoring, or a regular visit.
• Nothing is counted unless you answer. Closing that window, ignoring it, or answering “regular visit” records nothing at all for that chart.
• If you answer CCM or RPM, a timer runs while you work. It stops when you open a different chart, when you press stop in the add-on’s own window, and when this computer is locked or goes quiet for the same number of minutes with no key press or click that stops your working clock in section 3.
• Some of this work is genuinely done away from the chart, on the telephone or in another program, so the timer keeps running when Chrome goes behind something else or moves to another website. It stops by itself after 15 minutes of that, counted from the moment the chart stopped being the window in front of you. Coming back to the chart inside those 15 minutes simply carries on.
• What leaves this computer is a code such as P‑4XK7QW2M, which programme you said it was, and how long it ran. The patient’s name and date of birth are never read at all. The chart identifier is read from the address bar, but your browser turns it into the code before anything is sent, and the identifier itself is never sent.
• The code is worked out from the chart identifier using a key that was typed into this browser at installation. The key stays on this computer and is never sent to the practice website or anywhere else. Anyone who can use this computer can turn a code back into a chart, which is why staff can see whose minutes they are and the practice website cannot. This is a way of keeping the patient out of the website, not a claim that the record is anonymous.
• Your name is stored against each stretch so a wrong entry can be traced and corrected. It is not shown on the report. Minutes are added up per chart, not per member of staff; the per-person working is kept only so that a total can be checked if it is ever questioned.
• You can see everything this has recorded, and stop a running timer, from the add-on itself at any time.
• Some things stay on this computer and are never sent: the key described above; a list of up to eight hundred recent charts, each with its code, its chart identifier and a shortened address, so that the report can link back to them; your answers to the chart question, which stop counting for anything after twelve hours and are cleared the next time you answer one (an answer of CCM or RPM is used up the moment the timer starts); and, while a timer is running, the identifier of the chart it is running on. They are held in the browser’s storage for the add-on, which is not encrypted, so they can be read by anyone who can use this computer.Signing out of care minutes erases all of them. Signing out of the working clock is a different button and does not: it ends this computer’s enrolment on the clock and leaves the care side as it was, just as signing out of care minutes leaves your hours and any minutes still waiting to be sent alone. Lock the computer when you leave it.

10. Questions

Ask the practice. Dr. Bryant Medical Practice and MedSpa, 205-15 Hollis Avenue, Saint Albans, New York 11412. Nothing in this notice changes your right to raise a concern about it.

Notice version 2026-10-ny-1. Quote this number if you are ever asked which wording you agreed to.