Privacy and security

Thank you for visiting Fallon Health Weinberg’s website. Your personal privacy is important to us. To better protect your privacy, the information below explains how we collect and use your personal information. Please be aware that other privacy practices and policies may apply to personal information collected and used in venues outside of Fallon Health Weinberg’s website. Please see the Terms and Conditions and Disclaimer for further information that governs your use of this website. If you do not agree to all of the Terms and Conditions and Disclaimer, you may not access or use this website. Fallon Health Weinberg and its subsidiaries and affiliates may revise and update this Privacy and Security information from time to time without notice. Your continued use of this website means you accept those changes.

Collection and use of personal information

Our website provides you with the opportunity to voluntarily submit forms to request additional information about Fallon Health Weinberg. 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 Health Weinberg employees or agents. All employees of Fallon Health Weinberg 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.

Fallon Health Weinberg will not sell, rent, loan, trade or lease any information collected on our site, without your consent. However, please note that we may need to use this information within the Fallon Health Weinberg 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 Weinberg.

Except as noted above, Fallon Health Weinberg will not release individualized information obtained through this website 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 is currently handled. The information is used as defined herein. 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 the Fallon Health Weinberg site at any time and not remain in active session. If you choose to remain in session on our site, you implicitly consent to Fallon Health Weinberg’s Website Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions and Disclaimer.

Collection and use of other information: cookies and log files

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.

Fallon Health Weinberg’s 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 Fallon Health Weinberg’s website, and most web browsers provide a simple procedure that enables you to control whether or not you want to receive cookies or notifies you when a website is about to deposit a cookie file. Cookies or information will not be used to send unsolicited emails or to track website activity after you leave Fallon Health Weinberg’s website.

If you choose, you may block or delete our cookies from your hard drive; however, blocking or deleting cookies may cause some of Fallon Health Weinberg’s website features and functionality to work incorrectly.

Log files are pieces of information that let us know how people are accessing the website. Each time you go to a page in our website, our server shows this page on your computer. When the page displays, we create a log file that tells us that someone visited the page. We do not collect any information about you. Log files reside on our server and are not accessible by visitors. We use log files to create aggregate reports of site activity. This means we take the information about our visitors and add it together to report on all pages of the site visited.

Email

Please note that individualized information transmitted via email correspondence between you and Fallon Health Weinberg—as opposed to transmission over Fallon Health Weinberg’s website—is not encrypted. As a result, like most, if not all, non-encrypted internet email communications, 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/personal health information, please call your primary care provider or a Customer Service Representative at 1-855-665-1112 (TTY 711), Monday-Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Security

A range of security features protects the privacy of any individualized information you provide over Fallon Health Weinberg’s website. During transmission, your privacy is protected by encryption security. Other security safeguards are also in place. Once you have entered the Fallon Health Weinberg secure web portal for members, you can confirm the page you are viewing is secure by the padlock symbol located on the bottom-right of your web browser. If the lock shows as closed, security is active.

Fallon Health Weinberg uses physical, electronic and procedural safeguards to protect any personally identifiable data stored on its computers. Only authorized employees or agents have access to the information you provide to Fallon Health Weinberg.

Linked sites

Fallon Health Weinberg’s website has links to various other websites that we think might be useful or of interest to you. Fallon Health Weinberg, however, cannot be responsible for and does not endorse the privacy practices or the content of its linked websites. Fallon Health Weinberg urges you to review the privacy policies of any websites you visit once you leave Fallon Health Weinberg’s website. Links to various non-Fallon Health Weinberg websites do not constitute or imply endorsement by Fallon Health Weinberg of these websites, any products or services described on these sites, or of any other material contained in them.

HIPAA

HIPAA is the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).

HIPAA outlines strict guidelines to ensure the privacy and confidentiality of your PHI (personal health information, such as your name and medical information). These guidelines require that your PHI be used for purposes of treatment, payment and health plan operations, and not for purposes unrelated to health care.

If you would like more information regarding the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), please visit About HIPAA.

Interoperability

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released the Interoperability and  Patient Access final rule on March 9, 2020. This final rule requires most CMS-regulated payers–including, but not limited to, Medicare Advantage (MA) organizations, Medicaid Fee-For-Service (FFS) programs, and Medicaid managed care plans, to implement and maintain a secure, standards-based Patient Access Application Programming Interface (API) that allows patients to easily access their claims and encounter information including cost, specifically provider remittances and enrollee cost-sharing, as well as a defined sub-set of their clinical information through third-party applications (app) of their choice.

Third-party apps and your health information

If you choose to allow a third-party app to retrieve your health care data, it is important for you to take an active role in protecting your health information. If an app you are considering does not have a privacy policy, Fallon Health Weinberg advises you not to use that app.

When choosing your app, you should ask these questions:  

  • What health data will this app collect? Will this app collect non-health data from my device, such as my location?
  • Will my data be stored in a de-identified or anonymized form?
  • How will this app use my data?
  • Will this app disclose my data to third parties?
  • Will this app sell my data for any reason, such as advertising or research?
  • Will this app share my data for any reason? If so, with whom? For what purpose?
  • How can I limit this app’s use and disclosure of my data?
  • What security measures does this app use to protect my data?
  • What impact could my sharing of my data with this app have on others, including my family members?
  • How can I access my data and correct inaccuracies in the data retrieved by this app?
  • Does this app have a process for collecting and responding to user complaints?
  • If I no longer want to use this app, or if I no longer want this app to have access to my health information, how do I terminate the app’s access to my data?
  • What is the app’s policy for deleting my data once I terminate access? Do I have to do more than just delete the app from my device?
  • How does this app inform users of changes that could affect its privacy practices?

If the app’s privacy policy does not clearly answer these questions, you should reconsider using the app to access your health information. Your health information is very sensitive, and you should be very careful to choose apps with strong privacy and security standards to protect it.

Most third-party apps will not be covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). If you want to learn more about HIPAA, who is required to follow it and your rights under HIPAA, please see above, or here: https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-individuals/guidance-materials-for-consumers/index.html

Most third-party apps will instead fall under the jurisdiction of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the protections provided by the FTC Act. The FTC Act, among other things, protects against deceptive acts (e.g., if an app shares personal data without permission, despite having a privacy policy that says it will not do so).

The FTC provides information about mobile app privacy and security for consumers here:  https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0018-understanding-mobile-apps

If you think your data has been breached under HIPAA, you should contact our Privacy Officer:
Address: 1 Mercantile St., Ste 400, Worcester, MA 01608
Phone: 1-800-868-5200 (TTY: 711)
Fax: 1-508-831-1136
Email: compliance@fallonhealth.org

Additionally, you can submit a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights under HIPAA, or with the FTC.

Accessing and sharing your health information

If you are interested in sharing your health information with an app, here are the steps you will need to take:

  • Download the app(s) of your choice to your device. Click here to view a selection of apps that will allow you to access your Fallon Health Weinberg data.
  • When you are in the app, use the search bar to search for your health plan. You should search for “Fallon Health.”
  • Once you have selected your health plan, you will need to provide your consent for Fallon Health Weinberg to share your health data with the app of your choice. You will be asked for information including your email address, your birth date and your member ID number.
  • You will then be asked to provide a code that will be sent to your email address. The email will come from “no-reply@fallonhealthfhir.com.” This is the third-party vendor that Fallon Health Weinberg has partnered with.
  • Type the code from your email into the app.
  • At that point, you can agree to share your Fallon Health Weinberg medical data with the app of your choice.

Policy is subject to change

Fallon Health Weinberg is 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. Each time you visit this website or any Fallon Health Weinberg website it is your responsibility to review the most current Privacy and Security information, Terms and Conditions, Disclaimer and any other policies, restrictions, conditions and notices on this website or any Fallon Health Weinberg website and by accessing, browsing, and/or using this website or any Fallon Health Weinberg website, you accept and agree to be bound by the most current Privacy and Security information, Terms and Conditions, Disclaimer and any other policies, restrictions, conditions and notices on this website or such other Fallon Health Weinberg website.

Questions?

If you have any questions about our website privacy policy and/or practices, please contact us at 1-855-665-1112 (TTY 711), Monday-Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.