Partner Agreement

The Kalamazoo Care Network ("KzooCare") is shared software that helps independent community organizations in Kalamazoo County coordinate care: publish accurate service information, recognize when they are serving the same person, and send and track referrals — while keeping resident identity protected.

This agreement is between KzooCare and your organization ("Partner"). It applies to your organization and everyone you give portal access to. It does not create a partnership, joint venture, employment relationship, or agency relationship between us, and it does not make either of us responsible for the other's services.

Participation in KzooCare is free.

Partners are organizations or programs that provide community services in or serving Kalamazoo County. Before an organization is admitted, KzooCare verifies basic organizational and service information — that the organization appears to be a real, legitimate operation with a plausible public presence, reachable contact information, and services that fit the network.

Verification is not accreditation, certification, licensure, endorsement, or a guarantee. KzooCare does not evaluate the quality, safety, clinical appropriateness, financial condition, staffing, or legal compliance of a Partner, and does not guarantee that a Partner's services will be available or suitable for any particular person.

You confirm that the information you submit is accurate, that you are authorized to submit it, and that you will tell us promptly if something material changes — including if your organization stops operating a listed service.

Your directory listing is public and residents rely on it. Please keep your description, service categories, eligibility notes, hours, languages, cost information, and contact details reasonably accurate, and review them periodically or when we ask. If a service pauses or closes, mark it inactive rather than leaving it listed.

• Give portal access only to staff or volunteers who need it for their work and who are bound by your confidentiality expectations.
• Accounts are personal. Credentials must never be shared, and shared or generic logins must not be used.
• Multi-factor authentication is required for partner accounts. Do not attempt to work around it.
• Remove access promptly when someone leaves your organization or changes roles. Your organization's admins are responsible for their own team's access.
• Your organization is responsible for what is done under its accounts, including actions by staff and volunteers.

• Look up, open, or record resident information only when you have a genuine service-related reason connected to a person your organization is serving or is being asked to serve.
• Do not browse. Searching for neighbors, relatives, coworkers, public figures, or people you are merely curious about is prohibited, and lookups are logged.
• Enter only what is necessary for coordination. Free-text fields are not filtered — do not paste full case files, clinical records, immigration documents, or Social Security numbers into notes.
• Do not use network information for fundraising, marketing, research, publication, law enforcement referral, immigration enforcement, or any purpose other than helping the person receive services, unless the person has consented and the law allows it.
• Keep what you learn confidential and handle it at least as carefully as your own client records, both during and after participation.

Sharing in KzooCare depends on consent, and the system shares nothing when consent is missing, expired, or turned off. Your organization agrees to:

• Explain to the person, in language they understand, what would be shared (service history, recorded needs, referrals), with which organizations, and why.
• Obtain that person's consent before recording it, and record it honestly — including the method (verbal or written) and a decline when someone declines.
• Tell the person that they may limit sharing, exclude specific organizations, set an expiration, or withdraw consent at any time by telling any participating organization.
• Update or withdraw the consent record promptly when the person asks.
• Follow any stricter consent, confidentiality, or authorization rules that apply to your own organization. Where your rules are stricter, yours govern.

Consent records in KzooCare are recorded by staff on the person's behalf. They are not a substitute for a release of information your program is separately required to obtain.

A referral in KzooCare is a coordination message. Whether to accept someone, what services to provide, and how to provide them remain entirely your organization's professional decisions. Respond to incoming referrals in a reasonable time and keep their status current so the sending organization knows what happened.

KzooCare does not supervise, direct, guarantee, or take responsibility for another Partner's services, decisions, staff, or conduct. Partners deal with each other directly.

Tell us promptly at security@kzoocare.org if you suspect a compromised account, a lost device with portal access, information shared without consent, a wrongly disclosed record, or misuse by anyone — including your own staff. Reporting a concern in good faith will not be held against your organization.

Please cooperate reasonably with a legitimate investigation of suspected misuse or a security incident affecting the network. We will keep such investigations proportionate and confidential.

We may suspend or remove an account, or an organization's participation, where there is a credible concern about misuse of resident information, a security risk, materially inaccurate listings, or a serious breach of this agreement. Except where an immediate suspension is needed to protect residents or the network, we will contact your primary organizational contact first and give you a chance to respond and correct the problem.

Your organization may withdraw at any time by telling us. When you withdraw, we deactivate your accounts and remove your organization and its service listings from the public directory.

Some records remain, and you should know this before joining. Referral records, consent records and their change history, resident records, and administrative audit history are retained, because other organizations relied on them and because accountability records should not be erasable by the party they describe. Records that exist only as part of your organization's own account are removed with it. Your own obligation to keep resident information confidential continues after you leave.

We may update this agreement. Non-material updates take effect when posted. For a material change we will publish a new version and ask an authorized representative of your organization to accept it in the portal. Your earlier acceptance record is preserved, not overwritten.

KzooCare is provided free of charge, "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, express or implied. We do not warrant uninterrupted or error-free operation, or that information entered by other Partners is accurate.

To the fullest extent permitted by Michigan law, neither party is liable to the other for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages arising from participation in the network. Nothing in this section limits either party's own responsibility for its own unlawful conduct or for its own obligations to the people it serves, and nothing limits liability that cannot be limited by law. This agreement is governed by the laws of the State of Michigan.

Your organization also remains subject to the public Terms of Use and the Privacy Policy.

Network questions: jason@kzoocare.org
Security and privacy concerns: security@kzoocare.org