Subject: Federal Standards:  UCAR’s Privacy Practices and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Medical and other health information is private and should be protected.  The Privacy Rule, a Federal law, gives you rights over your health information and sets rules and limits on who can look at and receive your health information. The Privacy Rule applies to all forms of individuals' protected health information, whether electronic, written, or oral. The Security Rule, a Federal law that protects health information in electronic form, requires entities covered by HIPAA to ensure that electronic protected health information is secure.

As part of the HIPAA regulations, UCAR is required to advise employees of UCAR’s privacy practices with regard to your protected health information. Protected health information (PHI) is defined as information about you, which is maintained by UCAR to carry out certain health care operations such as eligibility, enrollment, payment of premiums and payment of claims on your behalf.

Any health information received by the UCAR Benefits staff is, and shall continue to be, handled in a confidential manner.  UCAR has implemented a number of security measures to help prevent unauthorized access to such information.

You are encouraged to carefully review the Notice of Privacy Practices document and review the UCAR HIPAA Privacy Policy.

If you have questions after reviewing any of this documentation, please contact Laurie Carr, 303-497-8702 or lcarr@ucar.edu. This notice does not affect your eligibility or benefits. Neither this notice nor any of the other documentation requires any response from you.

April 2010