CUSTOMER NOTICE
OF OUR INFORMATION PRIVACY POLICIES AND PRACTICES

To Our Customers:

Benefit Management Services knows that our customers expect privacy and security regarding all of their personal and financial information. It is important to us that we protect the privacy and security of your information.

This notice will tell you about how we collect, use, secure, and share your personal information, which is information about you that identifies you and that we obtain from you and others when we provide services to you.

What Information We Collect and From Whom We Collect It:
We collect personal information about you that includes your name, address, Social Security number, health, and financial information. This information is obtained from the forms you fill out, from telephone or person-to-person interviews with you, and from your employer group health plan. We also obtain your personal information through claims documents, payment history and other records available to us. We may also receive personal information about you from our affiliates and other companies.

What Information We Share and To Whom We Share It:
We may share your information, even after you are no longer our customer, with our affiliates as well as companies we do business with. We only share your information that we are allowed to by law. We also may share your information with your group health plan. The information that is used and shared is governed by the HIPAA Privacy Rule and our contract with your group health plan. See your group health plan's Notice of Privacy Practices for more information.

How We Protect Information:
Within our companies, only our employees who need to know about your information in order to provide our services to you are allowed to have access to your information. We keep your information safe and secure so that unauthorized individuals do not have access to it. We maintain physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards that comply with legal requirements to protect your information.

Benefit Management Services is committed to protecting the information you provide to us over the phone, in person or through the mail. We also respect the privacy of all individuals who visit our website. This is how we handle information we learn about you from your visit to our website:

If you visit our site to read or download information:

BMS routinely gathers data on website usage, such as how many people visit the site, the sections they visit, what time they visit, how long they stay, etc. Please know that site visitor data is collected on an aggregate, anonymous basis. That means no personal information is associated with this data unless you voluntarily provide it to us.

We collect and store the following information: the name of the domain from which you access the Internet (for example, yahoo.com if you are connecting from a Yahoo account); the browser version from which you access our site; the date and time you access our site; and the Internet address of the website from which you linked directly to our site. We use this information to measure the number of visitors to different sections of our site and to help us make our site more useful to visitors.

We understand the importance of protecting children's privacy, especially in an Internet environment. It is our policy never to knowingly collect or maintain information from children by way of the Internet. We also do not collect information for distribution to third parties via your visit to our website.

If you identify yourself by sending an E-mail:

WE CANNOT GUARANTEE THE CONFIDENTIALITY OF PERSONAL INFORMATION TRANSMITTED TO US BY E-MAIL.

Please use your own best judgment when sending information via the Internet to an e-mail address. E-mail sent via the Internet may pass through private and public networks with varying levels of security. Some networks may have taken steps to maintain the security of e-mail transmissions while others have not, thereby compromising the privacy and integrity of your e-mail. An e-mail may be copied, altered or destroyed by anyone who is able to access it.

If you have personal or confidential information to relay to our company, please call the appropriate customer service phone number that you will find in our Customer Service Contact Us section.

If you send us e-mail to ask a question, we will use the information you provide to answer your request. If you do provide personal information, such as an e-mail address, telephone or fax number, or other identifying information, we will not disclose it to third parties except as provided in our Privacy Notice, above. We will preserve the content of your e-mail, your e-mail address and our response so that we can efficiently respond to questions you might have. We also do this in an effort to meet legal and regulatory requirements.

If you respond to an online survey or complete an online form:

You may have an opportunity to provide information to us through online surveys and forms. We use this information to better understand health care needs and to provide quality products, service and other opportunities.

BMS wants your visit to our website to be informative and enjoyable. We plan to use any information we obtain from you to help us continually improve the content, functionality and overall usefulness of our website.

Updates to this Privacy Notice:

We recognize and respect your desire for privacy when it comes to your personal and health care affairs. We protect online information according to established company security standards and practices, and we continually evaluate new technologies for safeguarding information.

Evolving technology will continue to provide us with new and better ways to collect and use information so that we may better serve your health coverage needs. We may revise or update this BMS Privacy Notice in the future to reflect these technological advances, and we encourage you to return to this page from time to time for any updates.

Contact Information
Privacy Office
Benefit Management Services
P.O. Box 84656
Baton Rouge, LA 70884-4656
Telephone: 225.298.1751
Fax: 225.295.2599
E-mail: Privacy.Office@BCBSLA.com