Terms of use

What the service is, and is not

CaseCart is a shared record of surgeons’ stated preferences for how their cases are run, kept by an operating-room team, or by one person for their own use, and open to its members in every role. Its content is entered, corrected and confirmed by those members; the service organizes that content, keeps its history, and delivers it where it is useful, and where it uses automated means to do so, it marks entries that have not been confirmed by a person.

The service is not a clinical record, not a medical device, and not a source of clinical recommendations. An entry does not substitute for the surgeon’s own instructions, for the operative plan, or for the training and judgement of the person reading it; where an entry and the surgeon disagree, the surgeon should be followed and the entry should be corrected. Nothing in the service is to be relied upon in the care of any patient.

Accounts and conduct

An account is personal to the person who holds it. It is created by signing up on the website, by accepting an invitation from an organization’s administrator, or through a join link an administrator has shared. Users agree to keep their sign-in email and password under their own control, to contribute only what they believe to be accurate, to attribute nothing to a surgeon that the surgeon did not express, and never to enter patient information of any kind, in text or in a photograph.

Administrators agree to invite only people who belong in their organization’s books, and to remove access for those who leave. A join link admits anyone who holds it and can sign in, with the role and books the link names, until it expires, reaches its limit of uses, or is revoked; the administrator who creates a link is responsible for where it is posted and for revoking it when it is no longer wanted.

Books and who owns them

Every book belongs to one organization, its owner, and a personal book belongs to the person who keeps it. The content of a book (its attendings, procedures, preference entries, photos and their history) belongs to the book’s owner, whoever contributed it. An organization whose people use another organization’s book through a link gains access for the seats it holds there, not ownership, and what its members write in that book becomes part of it. Ownership of a book moves only to an organization already linked to it: by an offer the owner makes and the other accepts, or automatically in the circumstances described under “When payment stops”.

When a member brings entries from their personal book into an organization’s book, those entries are copied, filed under the organization’s book as that member’s statements, and become part of it; the personal book is untouched and remains the member’s own.

An organization may remove an attending from its book. The attending’s card is then held for 30 days, during which the organization may restore it. If the attending holds a CaseCart account linked to that card, they are offered it, and by keeping a book in CaseCart the organization agrees that the attending may take it: the entries filed under their name, with the procedures and photos those entries use, move at once into a free account of the attending’s own and leave the organization’s book. A card that is declined, not taken, or not linked to an account is deleted at the end of the 30 days.

Plans, seats and payment

Free and Pro are for one person keeping their own book; Team is for a group sharing one book; Business allows several books and per-seat control of what each person sees; Enterprise is by agreement. Each plan’s limits (on books, on attendings in a book, on the organization’s own seats on a book, on Generate-brief runs, and on photos per book and per card) are those shown on the Plan page under Settings, and its prices are those shown on the website; both are charged through our payment processor, Stripe, exclusive of any sales tax due. When a book holds more attendings than its plan allows (because a paid plan ended, or a card was handed over into it), nothing is deleted: the attendings beyond the limit, by the date they were added, become read-only until the plan allows them or others are removed. An organization cannot move to a plan it does not fit: a lower plan is refused until the organization has removed the books or seats the lower plan does not allow.

On Team and Business, seats are bought in advance for each billing period. An organization may seat and invite people up to the number of seats it has bought; an administrator who holds no seat is not counted. Additional seats are charged when they are added, prorated to the end of the period. A lower number of seats takes effect at the end of the current period and cannot fall below the seats in use. The emailed brief, where an organization buys it, is bought for every seat on the subscription or for none; who among the seated people receives it is the administrators’ choice.

Subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each monthly or yearly period until cancelled. A cancellation takes effect at the end of the period already paid for. Payments are not refunded for a partial period.

CaseCart may offer codes that make a plan free for a stated period on a monthly subscription. No card is needed to start one. If no card is on file a week before the free period ends, the organization’s administrators are emailed; at the end of the period the subscription renews at the plan’s price, and if it cannot be charged, it is treated as described under “When payment stops”.

When payment stops

When a Pro subscription cannot be charged, the account keeps Pro while the payment is retried; if the payment does not succeed, the subscription ends and the account returns to Free, with nothing deleted and Free’s limits applying.

When a Team, Business or Enterprise subscription cannot be charged or ends, and from the day an organization is created if it has never subscribed, the organization’s books are read-only for its people: the Preference Book can be read and nothing else works, and its administrators are offered an export of their books as a file. After 30 days its people are locked out, and the export remains available to its administrators. If another organization linked to one of its books holds paid seats there, that organization’s administrators may act as the book’s administrators from day 90, both organizations are warned at days 120 and 150, and at day 180 ownership of the book passes to the linked organization holding the most paid seats on it whose plan can hold the book, unless that organization declines; the former owner keeps a link to it. A book that no paying organization takes is deleted at 12 months, together with every entry and photo in it, after notices 60 and 30 days before; no copy is kept. Paying at any point before deletion restores the organization’s access at the next nightly update.

Inactive free accounts

A Free account that has not been signed in to for a year is deleted, together with its book, after notices to its email address 60 and 30 days before. Signing in once at any point keeps the account. No copy is kept after deletion.

OR photography

A photo in CaseCart is of the setup of a case (a table, a tray, a position, a piece of equipment) and never of a patient. The person who uploads a photo confirms, for each photo, that it contains no patient information, and that confirmation is kept with the photo, with who gave it and when. Each organization remains bound by its hospital’s own rules on photography in the operating room, which govern what may be photographed; CaseCart does not replace them, and an organization should not allow photos until it knows what those rules permit. Anyone who can see a photo may flag it for an administrator’s review. A photo that is retired is held for 30 days, during which it can be restored, and is then deleted.

Data

The privacy page describes what is stored, what is not, the companies that process data on our behalf, how books are kept apart, and how records are removed. CaseCart may process the content of a book to provide the service, including through the subprocessors named on the privacy page, and may use aggregate, de-identified usage measures to operate and improve the service. Any additional agreement an organization or institution requires before its data is processed, such as a data-use or business-associate agreement, is to be raised with CaseCart before the organization begins use.

Availability

The service is provided as is and as available, without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including any warranty of accuracy, fitness for a particular purpose, or uninterrupted operation. Entries may be out of date, incomplete, or wrong, and an organization using the service accepts that its members will continue to prepare for cases as they would without it. Features and plans may change; a change to a price or a limit that affects a paid subscription takes effect at its next renewal, after notice.

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, CaseCart and its founder are not liable for any indirect, incidental, or consequential loss arising from the use of, or inability to use, the service, and the total liability for any claim is limited to the amount the organization has paid for the service in the twelve months preceding the claim.

Support access

To help with a question an organization raises, CaseCart staff may open a time-boxed, read-only support session on that organization’s records, as described on the privacy page: at most eight hours, with a stated reason, logged with the pages opened, shown to the organization’s administrators as a banner while it is open, and ended by them at any time. Staff cannot change an organization’s records through a support session; changes are made only by the organization’s own administrators or by a database change CaseCart tells the organization about. A support session covers the organization it is opened on and the books that organization owns; a book shared to it by another organization can be viewed only through a session on its owner.

Termination

An organization may stop using the service at any time, by cancelling its subscription under Settings → Plan and by asking that its account be removed, as described on the privacy page. CaseCart may suspend or end access for conduct that breaches these terms, in particular the entry of patient information, and will say why.

Changes and contact

Material changes to these terms will be shown to users at their next sign-in and take effect from that point. Questions go to support@casecart.ai.