Privacy Policy

Sentinel Medical Transport Services LLC ("Sentinel," "we," "us," or "our") operates sentinelmedicaltransport.net and provides medical courier and logistics services in the Dallas–Fort Worth area. This policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, and the strict limits we place on ourselves regarding protected health information.

1. The Short Version

• We do not collect, store, or transmit protected health information (PHI) in any digital system.
• We identify specimens by container or accession number only, never by patient name, medical record number, or ordered test.
• We do not sell your information. We do not share it for advertising. We run no ads.
• We text only people who have agreed to be texted, and you can stop it at any time by replying STOP.

The rest of this page is the detail behind those four sentences.

2. Information We Collect

2a. From visitors to this website

Information you give us. If you use a contact form or request a quote: your name, business email, phone number, facility name, and whatever you write in the message field.

Information collected automatically. Standard server and analytics data — IP address, browser type, pages viewed, referring page, timestamps. Used to keep the site running and to understand which pages are useful. Not used to build a profile of you.

2b. From client facilities

When a facility engages Sentinel, we collect and maintain business contact information for the people we coordinate with: name, job title, facility name, business phone, business email, and the facility's pickup and delivery locations, hours, and standing instructions.

This is business contact information about facility staff. It is not patient information.

2c. What we collect during transport, and the hard line we do not cross

This is the most important section on this page.

We handle physical specimens and materials that carry patient identifiers on their labels. That is unavoidable in this business. We train for it, we protect it physically, and we operate under a Business Associate Agreement with every covered entity we serve.

We do not put any of it into a digital system. Ever.

Our chain-of-custody records, dispatch logs, manifests, and messages identify items by specimen accession number or container ID only, a number the laboratory assigns, and only the laboratory can resolve back to a patient. Sentinel cannot resolve it, and does not try.

Specifically, no Sentinel document, database, message, or photograph contains:

• a patient name
• a medical record number (MRN) or patient ID
• a date of birth
• a diagnosis or ordered test
• any other individually identifiable health information

Photographs. Our couriers photograph the signature and time block on a delivery record: the signature, the printed name of the receiving staff member, and the time. They never photograph a specimen label, a requisition, or any patient identifier. Incident photographs capture the container, the damage, or the vehicle. Never a label.

We do not encrypt the image and call it protected. We do not create the image.

3. How We Use Information

• To schedule, route, and complete pickups and deliveries
• To maintain chain-of-custody records, which our clients and regulators require
• To communicate with facility staff about runs, timing, and exceptions
• To send invoices and collect payment
• To meet our legal, contractual, and HIPAA obligations
• To respond to inquiries from the website

We do not use your information for advertising, and we do not sell or rent it.

4. Who We Share Information With

We share information only where it is necessary to run the service:

We do not share information with advertisers, data brokers, or marketing platforms.

Mobile numbers and SMS consent: an absolute limit

Text messaging originator opt-in data and consent will not be shared with any third parties.

No mobile information will be shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. Phone numbers collected for SMS are used solely to deliver the operational messages described in Section 6, and for no other purpose. They are not sold, rented, traded, or disclosed to any other party.

The only parties that ever handle a mobile number are the carriers and messaging providers strictly necessary to deliver the message itself, and they are prohibited from using it for any other purpose.

5. Your Choices

• Email us at dispatch@sentinelmedicaltransport.net to ask what business contact information we hold about you, to correct it, or to ask us to delete it.
• Deletion has limits. Chain-of-custody records and compliance documentation are retained under legal and contractual obligation and cannot be deleted on request.
• Texts: reply STOP to any message. See below.

6. Text Messages (SMS)

Sentinel sends two kinds of text messages, and neither one ever contains protected health information.

Operational alerts to client facilities. Pickup confirmations, ETA updates, delivery confirmations, and exception notices. These messages identify items by accession or container number only. No patient name. No MRN. No test. No diagnosis.

Internal alerts to Sentinel personnel. Compliance deadline reminders, dispatch alerts, and operational notifications sent to our own staff.

Consent

We text you only if you have agreed to it. Consent is captured in one of two ways:

• Client facilities: a signed consent provision in your Client Service Agreement or onboarding documentation, identifying the specific mobile numbers to be contacted.
• Website visitors: an explicit, unchecked-by-default opt-in checkbox on our contact form.

We do not buy phone number lists. We do not text anyone who has not agreed to it. Consent to receive texts is never a condition of receiving service from Sentinel.

Opting out

Reply STOP to any message and we will stop texting that number. Reply HELP for assistance, or contact us at dispatch@sentinelmedicaltransport.net.

Message and data rates may apply. Message frequency varies with your run volume.

Full SMS terms are on our SMS Terms & Conditions page.

7. Security

We use multi-factor authentication on business accounts, a password manager for credentials, and encrypted storage for sensitive files. Our couriers are trained on HIPAA and on our own PHI boundary standard.

Our strongest security control is not technical. It is that we do not collect the sensitive data in the first place. A breach of Sentinel's digital systems does not expose patient information, because patient information is not in them.

8. Retention

• Business contact and operational records: kept while you are a client and for as long as our contracts and applicable law require afterward.
• Chain-of-custody records: retained per our HIPAA policy and client agreements.
• Website analytics: retained on a rolling basis.
• Text message logs: retained by our carrier per its standard retention. Because these messages contain no PHI, that retention creates no patient-privacy exposure.

9. Children

This site is not directed to children, and Sentinel does not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13.

10. HIPAA and Texas Law

Sentinel operates as a HIPAA Business Associate to the covered entities it serves, and as a covered entity under Texas Health & Safety Code Chapter 181 (HB 300), which defines the term more broadly than federal law.

If a breach occurs, we notify the affected covered entity within 24 hours of discovery, not the 60-day federal ceiling. Texas Business & Commerce Code Section 521.053(c) requires immediate notice to the owner of the data, and we have built our obligations around that standard rather than the minimum.

11. Changes

We will post any changes here and update the "Last Updated" date. Material changes affecting client facilities will be communicated directly.

12. Contact

Sentinel Medical Transport Services LLC
5900 Balcones Drive, Suite 100
Austin, TX 78731

Email: dispatch@sentinelmedicaltransport.net

Serving the Dallas–Fort Worth east corridor.