PROTECTING YOUR EMPLOYEES’ CONFIDENTIALITY

At CIGNA HealthCare, we’re committed to maintaining the confidentiality of your employees’ personal health and financial information (“personal information”). We have developed internal policies and procedures to comply with our Confidentiality Policy and with state and federal privacy laws. This notice answers some common questions about our confidentiality policies.

HOW DO WE PROTECT YOUR EMPLOYEES’ PERSONAL INFORMATION?

CIGNA HealthCare employees and organizations who act on behalf of CIGNA HealthCare are required to keep your employees’ personal information confi dential. Here’s what we are doing to help ensure this policy is followed:

  • We’ve established a CIGNA HealthCare privacy program office, which is responsible for monitoring our compliance with confidentiality policies and for educating CIGNA HealthCare employees on this important topic.
  • Whenever possible, we provide only aggregate information that doesn’t identify any individual.
  • If we need to share your employees’ personal information, we have policies and procedures that protect confidentiality.
  • Our employees may not disclose personal information to other employees except when it is needed to conduct CIGNA HealthCare operations.
  • In accordance with the HIPAA Privacy Rule, we require business associates who receive personal information and act on our behalf or provide a service to us to sign an agreement in which they promise that they will use information only for the purposes for which it was provided.
  • In some situations, we require a member’s written authorization before we disclose personal information. For example, we will not supply personal information to a potential employer with whom a member is seeking employment without the member’s signed authorization, and we will not supply personal information to another company for its marketing purposes.
  • We restrict access to personal information about our members to employees, service providers, and companies that are involved in administering health care coverage and servicing our members. We maintain physical, electronic and procedural safeguards that comply with federal standards to guard the personal information of our members.

WHAT TYPES OF PERSONAL INFORMATION DO WE RECEIVE?

We may receive personal information about your employees from you or from your employees at the time of enrollment. We also receive personal information needed to administer your plan from your employees when they submit a claim or pay a premium. In addition, other insurers may provide us with personal information to coordinate benefi ts. Lastly, we receive personal information from health providers and premium payment histories from you or from a bank. The information we receive includes personal health information as well as names, addresses and social security numbers.

HOW WE USE YOUR INFORMATION

CIGNA HealthCare will not release confidential information unless it is to administer the benefi ts plan or to support CIGNA HealthCare programs or services, such as our care management and wellness programs. We may disclose personal health information or other types of information, including names addresses and social security numbers, to:

  • Medical providers and plan sponsors
  • Insurers that provide reinsurance or excess (stop loss) insurance to an employer or with whom we are coordinating benefits
  • CIGNA HealthCare affi liated companies such as Intracorp, CIGNA Behavioral Health, Inc., CIGNA Dental companies and CIGNA Tel-Drug companies
  • Regulatory agencies such as departments of insurance and accreditation organizations such as the National Committee for Quality Assurance
  • Courts or attorneys who serve us with a subpoena
  • Successor insurers or claim administrators who assume responsibility for administering your benefit plan
  • Companies that assist CIGNA HealthCare in recovering overpayments, paying claims or performing utilization review services
  • Other companies not affi liated with CIGNA HealthCare that provide services to us when disclosure is permitted or required by law

You may contact our Privacy Office at:

Privacy Office

PO Box 55270
Phoenix, AZ 85078-5270
Telephone Number: 602.956.4200
Fax Number: 602.328.4035