HIPAA Privacy Notice
Multiple Health Plans (OCHA)
NOTICE OF PRIVACY PRACTICES THIS NOTICE DESCRIBES HOW MEDICAL INFORMATION ABOUT YOU MAY BE USED AND DISCLOSED AND HOW YOU CAN GET ACCESS TO THIS INFORMATION, PLEASE REVIEW IT CAREFULLY.
The Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act of 1996 (“HIPAA”) is a federal law that requires that all medical records and other individually identifiable health information used or disclosed by us in any form, whether electronically, on paper, or orally, are kept properly confidential. This Act gives you significant new rights to understand and control how your health information is used. HIPAA provides penalties for covered entities that misuse personal health information.
As required by HIPAA, we have prepared this explanation of how we are required to maintain the privacy of your health information and how we may use and disclose your health information.
We may use and disclose your health information only for each of the following purposes: treatment,
payment, health care operations and certain special situations.
- Treatment means providing, coordinating, or managing health care and related services by one or more health care providers. An example of this would include case management.
- Payment means such activities as obtaining reimbursement for services, confirming coverage, billing or collection activities, and utilization review. An example of this would be adjudicating a claim and reimbursing a provider for an office visit.
- Health care operations include the business aspects of running our health plan, such as conducting quality assessment and improvement activities, auditing functions, cost-management analysis, health plan budgeting, carrier bidding, and customer service. An example would be an internal quality assessment review or to a business associate of the health plan.
- Special Situations include disclosures for your safety or for the safety of the general public; to
individuals involved in your care or payment for your care (unless you specifically object to such
disclosures); for instances of national security; fon worker’s compensation; for organ donation
programs (if you are an organ donor); to military command (if you are a member of the armed services); to coroners, medical examiners or funeral directors; or as otherwise required by law.
We may also create and distribute de-identified health information by removing all references to individually identifiable information.
We may communicate with you to provide information about treatment alternatives or other health-related benefits and services that may be of interest to you, however, if we are receiving compensation for these communications, we must first obtain written authorization from you.
We may not use or disclose your genetic information for underwriting purposes. We may also not sell your health information without your express written authorization, unless the sale is part of a merger, transfer, sale or consolidation of the health plan to another health plan.
We will not use your protected health information for employment purposes or another benefits plan without your written authorization.
Any other uses and disclosures will be made only with your written authorization. You may revoke such authorization in writing and we are required to honor and abide by that written request, except to the extent that we have already taken actions relying on your authorization.
You have the following rights with respect to your protected health information, which you can exercise by presenting a written request to the Privacy Officer:
- The right to inspect and copy your protected health information, either electronically or on paper, and obtain this copy within 30 days or within 60 days if we are unable to provide the information within 30 days and notify you of the delay within the first 30 days.