Fulcrum Benefits, Inc. Privacy Notice

Your privacy is important, and we are committed to protecting the information you provide us during our business relationship with you. This includes information you provide us online, in person, on paper or verbally.

The information often involves Personally Identifiable Information (“PII”) and/or Protected Health Information (“PHI”).

This Privacy Notice is dated and effective September 1, 2016 and is subject to review and updating. If you have any questions regarding this Notice, please call us at 515-278-1800 and ask to speak to our Privacy Officer, or write to us at: Fulcrum Benefits, Inc / Attn.: Privacy Officer / 6200 Aurora Ave #304W / Urbandale, IA 50322

What Information We Collect

We may collect "nonpublic personal information" about you, including PII and PHI. Generally speaking, PII and PHI involve information that someone could use either by itself or in conjunction with other data points to identify you, including but perhaps not limited to your name, social security number, date of birth, address history, common “reminders” for online access like your mother’s maiden name, and your private, personal medical history information. Further, we may have information about the policies with which we assist you, as well as transactions involving those policies including payment history and benefit levels.

Why must we collect certain data?

We need this information you provide to review insurance and other options for you, how they might best fulfill your business and insurance needs, to ensure they are properly issued and then properly maintained. PII is generally always needed; PHI is needed less often for the work we do for you.

Do you have to provide this data?

You must decide whether or not to provide us this information voluntarily. If you do not provide this information, it would be impossible for us to provide any options or ideas on filling your insurance or other business needs. The insurance companies we will work with on your behalf will require certain data points throughout the quoting, buying, installation and administration stages of the process. If you do not provide certain information, we cannot provide such options or our services to you. If you do provide us this data, you grant us legal authority to use it for the stated intent of pursuing, reviewing, securing and administrating insurance and other products.

Uses of the Information You Provide

We do not sell the information you provide us to any other vendor or other party.

We collect and use the information you voluntarily provide only for our normal business purposes, which include, but are not necessarily limited to, evaluating and securing products and services that are intended to fill your insurance needs, providing claim support, general
administration of these products and services, and assisting you with the day to day requests you may have in regards to these products and services.

Certain Personally Identifiable Information, as covered in the Affordable Care Act and its administrative rulings and other federal and state laws, is generally required by insurance companies to get quotes, issue policies and administer policies once issued.

Protected Health Information is sometimes required for these same purposes but usually more so if you ask us to assist you in a claim situation. PHI is protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) and generally relates to your physical and mental health (at any time) or the payment for your medical care. We are not a health care provider, so we do not use your PHI for the treatment or determination of care but we might need this information to discuss your situation with your health care providers to facilitate payment. Generally, if such claim support is needed, we may ask for a separate HIPAA release form. You are welcome to ask for and execute such form at any time during our relationship with you.

We may be required by law or by edict of federal or state agencies (such as the Department of Health and Human Services) to provide access to our files to such agencies for review of our practices and procedures in protecting your privacy, for public health risks, for fraud investigations, or other federal or state jurisdictional matters.

We may disclose PHI if you are part of an employer-sponsored health plan to the named fiduciaries of that plan as allowed or required by the plan documents. Such information must be held confidentially in accordance with the fiduciary’s responsibilities toward the plan.

With regards to PHI, you may always request, in writing, that we (a) restrict the use or disclosure of PHI specifying what PHI you want restricted, to or from whom it is restricted, and how it should be restricted; (b) limit our communications to more confidential means, as long as such means are reasonable and within the law; (c) access to your PHI in our records and to amend any PHI you feel is inaccurate or to see what disclosures of this information occurred; and (d) a copy of this privacy notice.

If, in spite of our efforts to protect your PHI, we determine a breach has occurred, you will be notified.

How We Collect Information

The information you provide may be conveyed to us in a variety of ways: electronically, paper, one the phone or in person. This may occur in our initial meetings, during the application process, when administering these products or services, or submitting a benefit claim or requesting assistance on such a claim. Of we work with your employer to offer these products and services, your employer may provide us with this information as well. While not common, we may obtain information from third parties such as adult family members, employers, other insurers, physicians, hospitals and other medical personnel if you authorize us to do so.

How We Protect Information

Our employees and other authorized vendors (such as our web and technology consultants) are required to protect the confidentiality of your information. We restrict access to nonpublic personal information about you to only those individuals who have a business reason to know the information, such as in order to provide services for you. We also maintain physical, electronic and procedural safeguards to protect information. All employees and other authorized personnel are required to comply with our established policies, including this privacy policy.

Information We DO NOT Collect

If you are attempting to secure individual insurance as part of the Affordable Care Act through healthcare.gov, we will NOT ask for NOR should you provide us your user name or password information for that website. This is not allowed.