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Privacy policy

Care Path Compare is an independent consumer publication. This policy explains the limited information processed when you visit the site, use optional analytics, select an affiliate link, submit the general contact form, or encounter display advertising if that feature is enabled after publisher approval.

Information you submit

The contact form may collect your full name, an optional company or organization, your email address, and your message. We use this information to review and respond to editorial questions, corrections, business inquiries, provider information, general feedback, or privacy requests.

Formspree processing

Formspree processes contact-form submissions on behalf of Care Path Compare and delivers them to the publication’s configured recipient. Form submissions are not automatically added to a marketing list or used to determine medical eligibility.

Do not submit sensitive health information

Do not submit medical records, diagnosis details, medication information, prescription requests, insurance information, or other sensitive health information. Care Path Compare does not operate a health-information intake service, does not use the contact form to provide healthcare, and does not represent that this general contact channel is covered by HIPAA.

Hosting, regional lookup, and security information

The hosting, content-delivery, and security services used to provide the site may process standard request information such as an IP address, browser and device information, requested URL, timestamp, referrer, and security signals. This information may be used to deliver pages, determine the applicable privacy experience, troubleshoot errors, prevent abuse, and protect the site.

Short-lived Vercel functions may read country and state request headers to determine the applicable privacy experience and whether a request is eligible for future display advertising. These functions do not return a visitor’s IP address to page code. State information used for regional privacy decisions is not sent to Google Analytics through our custom measurement events.

Sanitized Google Analytics measurement

Care Path Compare uses Google Analytics 4 for broad site measurement where permitted. Outside regions requiring prior health-data opt-in, analytics may begin by default unless you previously turned it off or your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal. Care Path Compare currently requires the stricter opt-in flow for visitors in Washington and Nevada.

The site sends manual page-view events using generic categories such as home, hub, article, policy, or contact. The site replaces descriptive page URLs, healthcare article titles, and referrers with generic measurement values before sending those events. Automatic enhanced measurement is disabled in the Care Path Compare GA4 web stream.

When analytics is active, Google Analytics may process a first-party analytics identifier, session information, approximate location, browser and device characteristics, generic page categories, and the limited interaction events described below. Advertising storage, advertising personalization, advertising user data, remarketing, and Google Signals remain disabled.

First-party aggregate interaction measurement

On English-language editorial articles, when optional analytics is active, Care Path Compare may record fixed first-party interaction counters to understand whether readers reach important research and disclosure elements. These counters can include an article view, scroll milestones, reaching a pricing-related section, viewing a comparison table, viewing or selecting an affiliate CTA, and selecting an internal research link.

The first-party measurement endpoint receives only an opaque page token, a fixed interaction category, and a coarse device class such as mobile, tablet, or desktop. The aggregate measurement table does not store raw healthcare URLs, provider names, medication names, link text, destination URLs, free-text input, IP addresses, cookies, session identifiers, or user identifiers. Individual raw interaction records are not retained; counts are added directly to daily page-level aggregates in Care Path Compare’s private intelligence database.

These first-party aggregate counters are not sent to Google Analytics. Care Path Compare can resolve the opaque page token internally to evaluate content performance. Turning analytics off, withdrawing consent, sending a Global Privacy Control signal, or an unresolved regional privacy lookup prevents future first-party interaction measurement for that session.

Google AdSense display advertising

Care Path Compare may use Google AdSense on selected educational pages after the site is approved for publisher advertising. Under the initial design, Care Path Compare does not load display ads on pages classified for affiliate monetization, outside the United States, for visitors in Washington or Nevada, when a Global Privacy Control signal is present, or in preview, development, automated-testing, and monitoring contexts.

Google’s AdSense platform can use cookies and other identifiers to serve ads, including ads based on a user’s prior visits to this or other websites. Care Path Compare’s intended health-site configuration is more restrictive: eligible ad requests will disable ads personalization and request non-personalized advertising. Non-personalized ads may still use contextual information, coarse location, cookies, or identifiers for functions such as frequency capping, fraud prevention, security, and aggregated advertising reporting.

Care Path Compare does not authorize Google advertising products to build or use a health-related audience profile from activity on this publication. Display-ad eligibility and privacy treatment are separate from the editorial content, provider comparisons, and affiliate relationships.

Sanitized affiliate-click measurement

When analytics is active, the site may send an affiliate_click event when you select an approved affiliate link. The custom event is limited to an opaque affiliate token, opaque destination, source-page, and CTA tokens, general CTA placement, and a generic page category. It does not send the provider name, medication name, affiliate network, affiliate program identifier, destination domain, destination URL, descriptive page path, article title, form contents, eligibility answers, or contact information.

Analytics preferences and Global Privacy Control

Use Analytics preferences in the footer to turn analytics on or off. The site stores an analytics preference in your browser using the local-storage keycpc_measurement_preference_v2. Clearing browser storage resets the saved choice.

When the browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, Care Path Compare keeps optional analytics and first-party interaction measurement disabled for that browser session. The initial display-ad design also treats a Global Privacy Control signal as ineligible for Care Path Compare display advertising. Declining or withdrawing analytics does not limit access to site content.

Consumer health data choices

Because Care Path Compare discusses healthcare options, visitors in Washington and Nevada are currently asked to make separate choices before optional measurement begins: consent for collection of the sanitized analytics and aggregate interaction information and separate consent to share the sanitized Google Analytics information with Google Analytics. The first-party aggregate interaction counters described above are not shared with Google Analytics. The initial display-ad design excludes visitors in Washington and Nevada rather than loading Google AdSense in those sessions. Additional disclosures, privacy-request instructions, and appeal details are described in the consumer health data privacy policy.

Cookies and similar technologies

When analytics is off, the Care Path Compare implementation does not load the Google Analytics tag and removes first-party _ga cookies where the browser permits. The first-party aggregate interaction measurement does not set a separate tracking cookie or session identifier. When analytics is active, Google Analytics may set first-party analytics cookies or identifiers.

If Google AdSense display advertising is enabled for an eligible page and visitor, Google and participating advertising vendors may use cookies or similar technologies for ad delivery, frequency capping, fraud prevention, security, and reporting. Care Path Compare intends to request non-personalized ads rather than behaviorally personalized ads.

Affiliate links and third-party sites

Some outbound provider links are affiliate links. Selecting one sends you directly to a third-party provider, retailer, or affiliate-network destination. Those third parties may process referral information and apply their own cookies, identifiers, terms, and privacy practices. Care Path Compare does not control their sites or data handling after you leave this site.

Outside regions using the stricter health-data consent flow, when optional analytics is active, supported affiliate networks may also receive privacy-safe attribution parameters on the outbound link. Care Path Compare limits these parameters to a generic website source, opaque source-page, CTA, and destination tokens, general CTA placement, and a tracking-schema version. They do not contain provider or medication names, descriptive healthcare page paths, article titles, form contents, eligibility answers, or contact information. These optional parameters are not added when analytics is off, a Global Privacy Control signal is present, regional privacy rules cannot be resolved, or the visitor is in Washington or Nevada.

Data retention

Contact messages are retained only as reasonably needed to respond, maintain business records, document corrections or privacy requests, or meet legal obligations. Google Analytics retention is controlled in the Care Path Compare property. Event-level exploration data should remain no longer than 14 months unless a shorter period is selected. Aggregated reporting may be retained differently by Google. Care Path Compare’s first-party behavior system retains daily aggregate page-level counters rather than raw individual interaction records; those aggregate counters may be retained for longitudinal content-performance analysis. Advertising data retained by Google is subject to Google’s applicable policies and settings.

Your choices

External privacy and advertising information

Google explains its own processing in the Google Privacy Policy. Google provides My Ad Center for ad preferences and a Google Analytics browser opt-out add-on. The Digital Advertising Alliance also provides an industry advertising opt-out tool. Third-party providers and affiliate networks publish their own privacy policies.

Policy changes

We may update this policy when data practices, service providers, legal requirements, or site features change. Material operational changes should be reflected here before or when the affected feature is enabled.

This policy describes Care Path Compare’s current practices and clearly labeled planned publisher-advertising safeguards. It is not a representation that the site is subject to every privacy law in every jurisdiction.

Effective August 4, 2026Last updated September 14, 2026