Health Data Privacy Policy

Who we are

Brightbill is operated by LASA Investments LLC. Contact us at support@brightbillapp.com.

The free check

The free eligibility check does not ask for your name, email, phone number, medical records or a copy of your bill. It stores your answers (state, hospital, insurance type, household size, income and bill amount) without anything that identifies you, so we can run and improve the check.

What we collect when you use Brightbill Navigator

If you buy a Brightbill case, we collect your email address to sign you in, a record of your purchase from our payment processor, Stripe, and your eligibility answers. We also keep the replies providers send to your case address and your answers to our check-in emails.

If you choose to use document reading, we also collect the documents you upload (such as bills, itemized bills, insurance statements, Good Faith Estimates, collection notices, hospital letters, paystubs, W-2s, tax returns and benefit letters) and the details we read from them, such as provider names, dates of service, charges, billing codes, amounts owed, insurance payments and income. Because bills and insurance statements show the health care you received, this is consumer health data. When we read a document we mask Social Security numbers and account numbers, keeping at most the last four characters.

How we use it

We use this information only to read your documents, check which protections may apply to your bills, show your results and next steps, and run your case. We do not sell it, use it for advertising, or use it to build profiles for anyone else.

Who we share it with

We share it only with service providers that process it for us to run Brightbill: Anthropic, the AI service that reads your documents; our hosting and database providers; our email provider, which sends your sign-in links and reminders; and Resend, which transmits the emails and attachments you authorize to hospitals, doctors' offices and regulators, receives their replies at your case address, and forwards each reply, with its attachments, to the email address on your account. While document reading is on, we also keep a copy of the reply in your case so Brightbill can read it and prepare your next step. PostGrid prints and mails the letters and documents you authorize for mailing, using your name and address as the return address. When you add a screenshot of a portal confirmation page, an AI service reads it once to find the confirmation number and date; the screenshot is not saved. Stripe processes payments and does not receive your documents. We share your information with a hospital, insurer or anyone else only when you choose to send something to them. We may also disclose information when the law requires it.

Your consent

We only collect and share health data from your documents after you check two separate boxes: one to collect and use it, and one to share it with our AI service provider. You can withdraw your consent at any time from your case page by choosing "Stop document reading."

Check-in emails

Before Brightbill sends an automatic follow-up on a charity care case, we email you a short question with links you can tap without signing in. Each link works only for that case and expires after 30 days, and we store only a scrambled (hashed) version of it. If you use it to send a photo of a provider's letter, we store the photo in your case and read it like any document you upload, under the consents you already gave.

How long we keep it

If you start a case for free and don't pay for it within 30 days, we delete that case and its documents. We delete your documents 90 days after your case closes. This happens automatically, and it also happens 12 months after you paid for the case, even if the case is still open. Along with the files, we delete the details we read from them: income, household, addresses, account numbers and the text of letters and replies. We keep only a basic record of the case (its status, dates and the amounts on the result) so we can count how well Brightbill works. You can delete a case at any time from its page, and it is removed right away.

Printed copies of the letters we mail for you are made when they are sent and are not stored by us. Our mail and email providers keep their own copies for a limited time, as their privacy policies describe.

Your rights

You can delete your account and all your data yourself: sign in, open your Navigator page and tap "Delete my account and data" at the bottom. Or email support@brightbillapp.com and we will do it for you. We respond within 45 days. Stripe keeps its payment records because tax law requires it, and we keep an anonymous count of each case (state, month and status, with nothing that identifies you). Copies you already sent to a hospital or other provider are held by them, not us.

You can see and correct the details we read on your case page. You can also ask us to tell you what health data we hold about you, to delete it, or for a list of the service providers we shared it with, by emailing support@brightbillapp.com. We respond within 45 days. We won't treat you differently for making a request. If we decline a request, you can appeal by replying to our answer. If you live in Washington and are unhappy with the result of your appeal, you can contact the Washington State Attorney General.

How we protect it

Your documents are stored privately in your account and are encrypted in storage and in transit by our providers. Only you and the systems that process them for Brightbill can access them. Links to view a document expire after 60 seconds.

HIPAA

Brightbill is not a health care provider, health plan or insurer, so HIPAA generally does not apply to the information you give us. This policy explains how we protect it instead.

Changes to this policy

If we change how we use or share health data, we will ask for your consent again before reading new documents under the new terms.