Protecting your privacy and information
Protecting your health information
We follow the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). HIPAA is a law that provides rules on how health plans must keep your personal health information (PHI) private and safe. These rules also state that we can only use your PHI for purposes of treatment, payment and health plan operations. Learn more by reading our HIPAA Notice of Privacy Practices (pdf).
Protecting your privacy on our website
Collection and use of personal information
Our website provides you with the opportunity to request additional information about Fallon Health (Fallon). In the course of these transactions, you may provide us with personal demographic information or possibly detailed medical information. We use the information you provide solely to help us respond to your request. As part of researching or fulfilling your request, your information may be shared with other Fallon employees. All employees of Fallon sign confidentiality agreements as part of our employment policy to ensure that any private information encountered through the course of their work is treated with the utmost respect.
At no time will we sell, rent, loan, trade or lease any information collected on our site. However, please note that we may need to use this information within the Fallon family of affiliate companies or with a third party vendor to perform administrative, technical, or other functions that help us provide service to you. We seek to hold third party vendors to the same privacy practices as Fallon Health.
Except as noted above, Fallon will not release individualized information to another party unless required to do so by government authorities, legal processes, or otherwise required by law.
Any personally-identifiable information collected through the website is not stored on the website, but will go to back office systems in the same manner that information from paper forms, submissions and phone calls to customer service are currently handled. The information is used as defined above. As a standard practice, as described below, we collect general statistical information on the content viewed, which is used to help us provide better service to you.
You have the right and ability to exit this website at any time and not remain in active session. If you choose to remain in session on our site, you implicitly consent to our privacy and security policies.
Collection and use of other information: cookies
When you visit our website, we collect certain information that does not identify you personally, but provides us with aggregate "usage data". This information is used to measure the number of visitors to the different sections of our site and to help us make our site more useful to our visitors. This information is retained and periodically deleted from the site; no back-up copies are made.
This website does employ "cookies" to provide visitors with information that is specific to them. A "cookie" is a packet of information sent by a website to a user’s computer, which is then sent back by the computer each time it accesses that website. These cookies do not contain any personally identifiable information, and they cannot be accessed or “read” by any website other than this website.
If you choose, you may block or delete our cookies from your hard drive; however, blocking or deleting cookies may cause some of the website features and functionality to work incorrectly.
Please note that individualized information transmitted via email correspondence between you and Fallon Health —as opposed to transmission over this website—is not encrypted. As a result, such email correspondence may be accessed and viewed by other Internet users without your knowledge and permission while in transit. For that reason, to protect your privacy, if you have concerns about your treatment, or questions that would involve the communication of confidential information, please call your primary care physician or Fallon Health at 1-866-473-0471 (TRS 711), 8 a.m.–6 p.m., Monday–Friday.
Electronic copies of email are not retained in the system once the issue has been resolved. However, hard copies of the information may be retained in Fallon files. Information from emails may be transcribed into other Fallon systems such as a calls database.
Security
A range of security features protects the privacy of any individualized information you provide over this website. During transmission, your privacy is protected by encryption security. Other security safeguards are also in place.
Fallon uses physical, electronic and procedural safeguards to protect any personally identifiable data stored on its computers. Only authorized employees have access to the information you provide to Fallon.
Linked sites
This website has links to various other websites that we think might be useful or of interest to you. Fallon, however, cannot be responsible for and does not endorse the privacy practices or the content of its linked websites. We urge you to review the privacy policies of any website you visit once you leave this website. Links to various non-Fallon websites do not constitute or imply endorsement by Fallon Health of these websites, any products or services described on these sites, or of any other material contained in them.
Policy is subject to change
We are always looking to offer expanded features and functions that make health care more efficient and accessible for their users. As additional features and functions are added, the privacy policy will be updated to correctly represent how information and features are being used. Please check this policy periodically as it is subject to change at any time.