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.
College Avenue Campus
(732) 932-8033
FAX: (732) 932-8641
TELEPHARMACY
SERVICES
(732) 445-3606
FAX: (732) 445-0047
Douglass
Campus
(732)
932-9805 ext. 430
FAX: (732) 932-1829