Privacy Policy

Effective date: August 16, 2026. This policy replaces the version dated August 8, 2026. What changed: we added a privacy-first visit counter that runs on our own web address, and this policy now describes exactly what it does and does not record.

The short version: this website was built to collect as little as possible. It has no contact forms, sets no advertising or analytics cookies, and sends nothing about your visit to outside companies: no Google Analytics, no ad pixels, no social media trackers. The only measurement is our own visit counter, which runs on our own web address, keeps totals rather than records of people, and cannot identify anyone. The games and storybooks save progress on your own device, not on our servers. When you’re ready to talk to us, you call us, and from there your family’s information is protected by our medical-privacy practices under HIPAA rather than collected through this website.

Who we are

Pediatric Dentistry of Florida, Dr. Tim Verwest, DMD & Associates (“we,” “our,” “us”) is a pediatric dental and orthodontic practice with offices in Fort Myers and Naples, Florida. This policy covers this website, drverwest.com, only. It is not our HIPAA Notice of Privacy Practices, which is the separate document that governs patient health information (more on that below).

What this website does not collect

• No forms. There are no contact, appointment, or sign-up forms anywhere on this site. Booking happens by phone, with a person.
• No third-party analytics or advertising trackers. We do not run Google Analytics, Google Ads tags, Meta/Facebook pixels, session-recording tools, or any similar outside service on this site. The only measurement is our own counter, described below, and it shares nothing with anyone.
• No advertising or analytics cookies. The site sets none, and the visit counter works without cookies too. If our hosting provider ever needs a strictly necessary security cookie to protect the site during an attack, that cookie is technical and short-lived and is never used for advertising or analytics.
• No third-party requests on page load. Fonts, maps, images, and video preview images are all served from our own website rather than from outside companies, so simply reading our pages does not announce your visit to anyone else.

How we count visits

To run the practice well we like to know things such as which pages help families most and when to add people to the phones. So this site keeps simple tallies, using a small counter that lives at our own web address. When a page opens, or someone taps our phone number or email link, the counter adds one to a running total for that page, the hour of day, the general device size (phone, tablet, or desktop), and the kind of place the visit came from (a search engine, a social app, an AI assistant, or a direct visit).

Just as important is what it never records:

• No people, only totals. There are no names, no profiles, and no way to tell one visitor from another. The counter cannot recognize you if you come back tomorrow, and that is on purpose.
• No IP addresses, no precise location, and no device fingerprints are ever saved by the counter.
• No cookies and no stored identifiers of any kind.
• Nothing is shared. The totals stay within the website’s own hosting account, managed by our website team, and are used only to run this website. No outside analytics or advertising company receives anything.

In practice, the counter can answer questions like “how many families read the sedation page this week?” and never questions like “who read it?”

The small amount of technical processing that does happen

• Web hosting. Like every website, our pages are delivered by a hosting provider (Cloudflare), whose systems process standard technical information such as your IP address and the page requested in order to deliver pages, keep the site fast, and block malicious traffic. We do not use this information to identify or profile visitors, and our visit counter does not store it.
• On-device storage for games and comfort settings. The brushing timer, badges, Dive Log, storybook progress, and the Calm Waters (reduced-motion) setting save small bits of progress in your browser’s own storage, on your own device. That information never leaves your device, and we never see it. Clearing your browser data removes it. If a child types a name into the Junior Diver certificate, the certificate is drawn on your device and the name is never sent to us.
• Videos, only if you press play. Practice videos are embedded with YouTube’s privacy-enhanced player (youtube-nocookie.com). Nothing loads from YouTube until you choose to play a video. While a video plays, YouTube receives the standard technical data involved in streaming it, under Google’s own privacy policy.
• Links to other sites. Our pages link to our Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube profiles. Following those links takes you to those platforms, where their privacy policies apply.

Children’s privacy

This website is written for parents and guardians, and its games and storybooks are made to be enjoyed together. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone, including children under 13, through this site. Game progress stays on your device, as described above, and the visit counter keeps totals only, with no personal information from anyone.

Patient health information and HIPAA

This website is intentionally kept separate from patient care. When you call, email, or visit us, information about your family is handled under the federal health-privacy rules (HIPAA) and our Notice of Privacy Practices, the document that explains how patient health information may be used and disclosed and the rights patients and parents have. You may request a copy of our Notice of Privacy Practices at either office or by calling (239) 482-2722.

A practical note: email is convenient, but it is not a secure channel for health details. For anything about your child’s care, please call us instead.

How we protect this site

The site is served over an encrypted connection (HTTPS) with modern browser security protections, and it deliberately runs no third-party scripts. Because the site collects no personal information (the visit counter keeps totals, not people), there is no website account, visitor profile, or marketing database connected to your visit. No website can promise perfect security, but the safest data is the data that is never collected.

Your choices and rights

Because this site does not collect personal information, and the visit counter keeps only totals, there is nothing for us to look up, correct, or delete about your visit. If you have any question about privacy, on the website or in the practice, call (239) 482-2722 and our team will help. Rights over patient records are described in our Notice of Privacy Practices.

Changes to this policy

If the way this website works ever changes, for example if we add an online booking tool, we will update this policy first, with a new effective date, and any tool we add will be chosen to meet healthcare privacy requirements.

Contact

Pediatric Dentistry of Florida, Dr. Tim Verwest, DMD & Associates
Fort Myers office: 8016 Summerlin Lakes Drive, Fort Myers, FL 33907
Naples office: 1035 Piper Boulevard, Suite 103, Naples, FL 34110
Phone (both offices): (239) 482-2722