HEALTH SERVICES
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Pharmacy
NOTICE OF INFORMATION PRIVACY
PRACTICES
This Notice summarizes how
information about you may be used and disclosed. Please
review it carefully.
To Our Customers and Potential
Customers:
Rutgers Health Services Pharmacy wants you to know
that we value you as a customer and take your privacy seriously. We recognize our obligation to keep personal
information about you secure and confidential.
It's important for you to know that, unlike many other
financial and health institutions, we do not sell information about you; and we
do not share your information except to conduct our business or to allow others
to conduct their business for your benefit - Making Healthcare Work for you.
This Notice summarizes our policies and practices
regarding our disclosure of your personal health information. We refer to this individually identifiable
personal, financial, health, and other information, from which a judgment could
possibly be made about your personal characteristics, as "Customer
Information".
Please read this Notice carefully to understand how we
protect and use Customer Information and to understand your privacy rights
relative to that information.
In
the process of serving your health coverage needs, we collect personal,
identifiable Customer Information about you.
We collect Customer Information from the following sources:
·
Information we receive from you or your policyholders
on applications or other forms;
·
Information we obtain from your transactions with us,
our affiliates or others, such as health care providers;
·
Information we receive from consumer reporting
agencies or others, such as state regulators and law enforcement agencies.
We believe that the best protection we can provide you
regarding Customer Information that we collect and maintain about you is,
simply, to keep it to ourselves. That is
why, except as explained below, we do not disclose information about our
customers to anyone. At RHS Pharmacy,
you do not need to take any action to prevent unlawful disclosure of your
Customer Information - we do that for you.
Our employees understand the need to maintain your
Customer Information with the strictest confidence. They agree to be bound by that promise of
privacy of your Customer Information; and are subject to disciplinary action if
they violate that promise. We also
maintain physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards to guard our Customer
Information about you.
Finally, in those situations where we rely on a third
party to perform business, professional or insurance services or functions for
us, those third parties are obligated to abide by our privacy policies and all
applicable privacy laws. In that way,
RHS Pharmacy remains committed to protecting the privacy of your information.
There may be circumstances where RHS Pharmacy will
seek your authorization before we make a disclosure of your Customer
Information to someone other than you - to be sure we have your permission to
make that disclosure. You are permitted
to revoke any authorization you give us at any time in writing. We will honor your revocation once processed,
except to the extent that we may have taken action in reliance upon your
original authorization.
Most
of the disclosures we make of your Customer Information, however, are made
because they are reasonably necessary to administer your coverage - either so
we can conduct our business or enable another to perform a valid business,
professional or insurance function for us.
In those instances, we are not required to seek your authorization in
order to make the disclosure. But our
business associates must agree to protect the privacy of your information,
since any report produced by them that contains your Customer Information could
be saved and further disclosed. Their
agreement to protect your Customer Information helps ensure that your
information is protected in the hands of our business associates.
There are a number of other situations where
authorization is not required before a reasonable disclosure can be made of
your Customer Information. They are as
follows:
·
To an insurer, agent or self-funded health plan
sponsor, to detect or prevent fraud, criminal activity or a material
misrepresentation or omission relating to your health coverage;
·
To a law enforcement or other governmental authority,
either to help us in preventing or prosecuting fraud or because we believe
illegal activities may have occurred;
·
To respond to an administrative or judicial order,
search warrant, or subpoena;
·
To an insurance regulatory authority;
·
To a medical care institution or professional, in
order to verify your coverage or benefits, to advise you of a medical problem
about which you may be unaware, or conduct an audit;
·
To a group policyholder, for purposes of reporting
claims experience or conducting an audit of the operations or services of the
group health policy;
·
To a certificate holder or policyholder to inform
him/her of the status of an insurance transaction;
·
To conduct a professional peer review of the services
or conduct of a medical care institution or professional;
·
To conduct actuarial or research studies, under
certain circumstances and conditions;
·
To a limited extent, for marketing purposes, under
certain circumstances and conditions;
·
To an affiliate, for audit and product/service
marketing purposes; and
·
As otherwise permitted or required by law.
In order to properly carry out the duties and
responsibilities of administering a group health benefits plan, whether
self-funded or insured, the plan administrator may require data, including
Customer Information. If you are covered
by a group health benefits plan, RHS Pharmacy is permitted, without your
authorization, to share with the plan administrator for your plan - and with
others, as agreed-to or directed by the plan administrator - the Customer
Information we receive or create on behalf of your plan.
The law provides you with several rights with respect
to your Customer Information. You have a
right to request, in writing, to inspect and obtain a copy of Customer
Information about you. This does not
include information that relates to, and is collected in connection with or in
anticipation of, a claim or civil or criminal proceeding involving you, or
information the release of which is prohibited by law. You must reasonably describe in your written
request the information you seek; and the information must be reasonably
available and retrievable by us. When permitted,
we may charge you a fee to cover the cost of providing this Customer
Information.
You also have the right to request, in writing, that
we amend or delete Customer Information about you that we have in our records
if you believe that the information is incorrect or incomplete. You must include the reason that you are
making this request; and we may deny your request. However, if we do so, we must advise you of
the reasons for the denial and advise you of your right to file a statement of
rebuttal.
You may file a complaint with RHS Pharmacy if you feel
that your privacy rights have been violated.
All complaints must be submitted in writing. You will not be retaliated against for filing
a complaint - it is against the law for us to retaliate against you for
complaining.
If you have any questions or comments about this
Notice, want to learn more about your rights under the law as described above,
or wish to exercise any of them, please contact:
Director, Quality & Compliance
HIPAA Compliance Officer
(732) 932-7402 x275
health@rci.rutgers.edu
RHS Pharmacy will provide you with notice of our
privacy practices annually, as long as you maintain an ongoing customer
relationship with us. Our policies may
change as we periodically review and revise them - and we will advise you if
the changes are significant. But you can
rest assured that we will not revise our Privacy Policy to permit the sharing
of Customer Information other than as described in this Notice and permitted or
required by law unless we first notify you and provide you with an opportunity
to object.
FULL PHARMACY
College
Avenue Campus
(732)
932-8033
FAX: (732) 932-8641
TELEPHARMACY
SERVICES
(732)
445-3606
FAX: (732) 445-0047
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Willets Health Center
Douglass Campus
(732) 932-9805 ext. 430
FAX: (732)
932-1829