Privacy and protection

Fallon Health Weinberg protects your personal health information. It can only be used for official reasons.

About HIPAA

What is HIPAA?
HIPAA is the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). While it is a broad and complicated law, it was essentially created to:

• protect patients' access to health care coverage when they change jobs
• enforce uniform standards for exchanging health information

In addition, it gave the Department of Health and Human Services the authority to mandate the use of certain standards and to specify the types of measures required to protect the privacy and security of personally identifiable health care information.

As a Fallon Health Weinberg-PACE participant, what do I need to know about HIPAA?

The HIPAA requirements are there to protect you, the consumer. With respect to health care, HIPAA is meant to simplify communications between health plans and providers—mostly through electronic means. However, you should be aware that HIPAA outlines strict guidelines to ensure the privacy and confidentiality of your PHI (protected health information, such as your name or 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.

Under HIPAA, Fallon Health Weinberg-PACE must:

• provide a Notice of Privacy Practices to all participants (the Notice is issued to all new participants with their enrollment materials and is also available here: Notice of Privacy Practices).
• make sure that every person or company who works with us protects participant information as we do.
• carry out privacy training for all employees, whether they deal with participant records or not.
• have consequences in place if participant information is used or shared improperly.
• notify you if your personal or protected health information has been breached.

As a family member or caregiver, how does HIPAA impact my relationship with Fallon Health Weinberg-PACE?

In order to provide a complete care package to our participants, Fallon Health Weinberg-PACE works closely with caregivers and family members. However, under HIPAA, Fallon Health Weinberg-PACE must ensure that only the participant and those with the proper authority are given access to the participant’s personal health information. Therefore, in addition to obtaining any forms of legal authorization for a participant (such as a health care proxy or durable power of attorney), Fallon Health Weinberg-PACE requests that the participant designate one or more persons to act as his or her personal representative(s). A personal representative is an individual that may be involved in the participant’s health care, but may not be otherwise expressly authorized to act on the participant’s behalf. Participants may designate one or more personal representative using the Appointment of Representative form. If you have any questions about who may assist your loved one with their care, please contact Fallon Health Weinberg-PACE at 1-855-665-1113 (TTY 711).

Web privacy policy

This policy explains how we protect your information on our website. Read our Web Privacy Policy