Privacy Protection Policy

We are committed to safeguarding the Personal Information we receive from our customers and associates. We impose standards to maintain the confidentiality of Personal Information. And we use physical, technical, and administrative safeguards to protect it.

Personal Information is information that can be connected to you through certain identifiers which can include: name, Social Security number (SSN), driver’s license, state identification card, account, credit/debit card, passport or alien registration numbers — among other items. Personal Information does NOT include publicly available information that is lawfully made available to the general public from federal, state or local government records or widely distributed media.

Our policies prohibit the unlawful disclosure of Personal Information. We share it externally only where federal and state law allows or requires it. Internally, it’s our policy to limit the access, use and disclosure of Personal Information to be in line with the job duties our associates, as well as applicable law.

If you have questions about this, call Member Services at the toll-free number on the back of your ID card.

Our Notice of Privacy Practices explains how your health information may be used and/or disclosed and how to access this information in accordance with HIPAA, an important federal privacy law. The notice reflects our obligations under Federal and individual State regulations. By law, we’re required to send our fully-insured health plan members a notice with those details.

These notices generally don’t apply if you’re part of an administrative services only (ASO) group health plan. To see which type of health plan you have, and whether this applies to you, check with the person or team that handles your health plan at your employer.

UniCare Privacy Practices
UniCare Privacy Practices – Spanish

Your Right to Request Confidential Communications of Medical Information (CCMI) and our Obligation to Protect the Confidentiality of Sensitive Services Information as a Protected Individual

California law says subscribers and enrollees (members) of a healthcare plan can choose how they would like the plan to communicate with them. They can provide the address, email, or telephone number they’d like the plan to use. That’s how the plan will contact them about medical details, healthcare providers, and other plan information.

A subscriber is the person who is responsible for plan payments or is eligible for the plan based on their job or other qualifications. An enrollee is a person covered by the plan or who receives services from it.

California also has special communication rules for protected individuals. They are covered adults or minors who can consent to care without permission from a parent or legal guardian. Protected individuals must be able to give informed consent for healthcare services.

Under California law, plans can’t tell the primary policyholder that a protected individual received sensitive services, unless they have the recipient’s permission. Sensitive services are all healthcare services related to mental or behavioral health; sexual and reproductive health; sexually transmitted infections; substance use disorder; gender-affirming care; intimate partner violence; or other care outlined by law.

Protected individuals can ask a plan to contact them about sensitive services at a different address, email, or phone number. If they don’t provide one, the plan will contact them by name using the method on file.

Members will be given details about the confidential communication request process when they enroll in or renew a plan. They can also submit a CCMI request by calling the Member Services toll free number on their Member ID card. The plan will honor their request until the member asks for it to be changed.

“Healthcare service plan” means an entity regulated pursuant to the Knox-Keene Health Care Service Plan Act of 1975 (Chapter 2.2 (commencing with Section 1340) of Division 2 of the Health and Safety Code).

We are committed to complying with HIPAA. HIPAA allows us to use and disclose identifiable health care and demographic information called Protected Health Information (PHI) for Treatment, Payment and Health care operations (TPO) purposes. Beyond TPO, you have the right to permit the release of your PHI by completing a Member Authorization form to define who can see your PHI.

If you would like your PHI disclosed with someone outside our company, fill out the Member Authorization Form or formulario de autorización miembro (en Español) and send the form to the address on the back of your ID card. Or, if you do not have an ID card, call us at 1-317-488-6000. If you don’t already have it, download Adobe Acrobat Reader for free (you need it to view the forms).

We, including our affiliates or vendors, might call or text you using an automated telephone dialing system and/or a prerecorded message. But we only do this in accordance with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). The calls may be to let you know about treatment options or other health-related benefits and services. If you do not want to be contacted by phone, just let the caller know and we won’t reach out this way in the future.

Information may be collected in the following ways on this Application:

If we provide user account access, you may elect to establish an account so that you can gain additional access to online service applications, health tools, health information, subscriptions or other services where it is important for us to know who you are in order to best meet your needs. Providing personal information is always voluntary.
We may use “cookies” to help us improve this Application by tracking your navigation habits and to store some of your preferences. A cookie is a small file created by a website or application to store information on your computer. Cookies do not allow websites or applications to gain access to other information on your computer. Once a cookie is saved on your computer, generally only the website or application that created the cookie can read it.
An Internet Protocol (IP) address is a number that automatically identifies the computer or mobile device that you are using to access the Internet. The IP address enables our server to send you the site pages that you want to visit or the data you want to view. The IP address may disclose the server owned by your Internet Service Provider. We use your IP address to help diagnose problems with our server and to support our administration of this Application.

Any personal information that you provide is used for the purpose for which you provide it. For example, if you use location services to find a provider near your current location, your location is used only to facilitate that function. Or if you provide us with an email address we will use it only for the types of communications we identify on that location of the Application where you give us your email address.

We may also gather quantitative user information, such as the number of users and the pages or data accessed, in order to perform administrative, technical, hosting or other functions that help us manage our Application and deliver new functionality to you. We do not sell, license, transmit or disclose personal information that you provide to us to third parties except with the following exceptions:

Upon your authorization
When such disclosure is necessary to allow us and our contractors or agents to carry out treatment, payment or health care operations.
When required or permitted by law

We may work with third party service providers who may place third party persistent cookies, web beacons, or similar technologies to collect anonymous information about the use of our Applications. They are not permitted to collect any personal information, and this information will be solely used for web usage analysis for a better understanding of how you use our Application, and/or to customize our content and advertising.

Providing personal information through this Application is optional. Personally identifiable information will not be collected from you without your knowledge and approval.

If you do not wish to have your activity on our Application tracked, you can opt-out at any time here to discontinue first party cookie tracking of your web activity.

You also have the choice to opt-out of third-party cookies, web beacons or similar technologies, if you do not want third party service providers to collect your anonymous information for marketing purposes, visit the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) website to perform the opt-out.

Additionally, you can direct your Internet browser to notify you and seek approval whenever a cookie is being sent to your hard drive. You may also delete a cookie manually from your computer, tablet or smartphone through your Internet browser settings or other programs. You can also set your browser to refuse all cookies. Please note that some parts of this Application may not function properly or be available to you, if you refuse to accept a cookie or choose to disable the acceptance of cookies.

We do not respond to web browser “do not track” signals. As such, your navigation of our Application may be tracked as part of the gathering of quantitative user information described above. If you arrive at our Application by way of a link from a third-party application that does respond to “do not track” requests, the recognition of any “do not track” request you have initiated will end as soon as you reach our Application.

We may provide email and fax links to further facilitate communication for our members and their designees and caregivers. Information collected through email may be shared with our Member Services department, other associates, or third parties that perform services on our behalf. Unless otherwise noted, email through our Application is not a completely secure and confidential means of communication. Non-encrypted email may be accessed and viewed by other Internet users without your knowledge and permission while in transit to us.

Also, if you request that we email or fax information about you to someone using the email and fax capabilities in this Application, that email or fax may not be completely secure. Please verify email addresses and fax numbers carefully before submitting such a request.

From time to time we will provide links to websites or applications not owned or controlled by us. We do this because we think the information might be of interest or use to you. A link to a third-party website or application does not constitute or imply endorsement by us. We cannot guarantee the quality or accuracy of information presented on third party websites or applications. While we do our best to ensure your privacy, we cannot be responsible for the privacy practices of third-party websites or applications. We encourage you to review the privacy practices of any website or application you visit.

We may share your information with health information exchanges, which allow doctors, hospitals and payers to view/share your health information quickly and easily — for treatment, payment or health care operations. These exchanges can improve the speed, quality, safety and cost of your care. Doctors, health insurers and others using an exchange like this are required to follow the privacy and security standards set by state and federal laws.

If you have questions regarding this policy or if you would like to review or change any of your personal information we have on file, please call us at the number on the back of your ID card.

This privacy statement is effective January 1, 2014 and was most recently revised March 1, 2017. This privacy statement is subject to change. We encourage you to review it from time to time.