Our Commitment to Protecting Your Privacy

GroupHEALTH Global Benefit Systems Inc. (“GroupHEALTH”) has been handling sensitive information on behalf of Canadian workers and their families for more than 25 years. Today, both federal and provincial protection of privacy legislation sets rules for everyone on how personal information must be protected. For more than two decades, even without legislation, we have always respected your privacy and have never shared information about you or your family unless it was necessary to maintain your benefits or to deal with a benefits claim you had submitted for payment.

GroupHEALTH takes your privacy seriously because we know that you do. We have worked diligently to ensure that our staff provides the highest level of integrity in providing group benefit services to you. Part of that diligence is our promise to keep you informed about what GroupHEALTH is doing to protect your privacy.

Federal privacy legislation, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, commonly referred to as PIPEDA, is the primary regulatory authority for Canadian insurance companies. Its purpose is to balance the individual's privacy rights with the need of government and private companies to collect, use and share information. Although all provinces have their own protection of privacy acts, because insurers are governed by the federal act, we conform in all respects to PIPEDA.

At GroupHEALTH your personal information is important to us. We are continually reviewing our privacy protection practices to ensure that not only are we always in compliance with changes to privacy legislation but that we are meeting your expectations of how you would want us to respect your personal information. Part of our responsibilities is to keep you informed about our privacy protection practices, our reasons for collecting your information, what we do with information we collect or receive, and who you can talk to if you have a concern.

As a service provider of group benefit insurance and related services, the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information and that of your dependents is an integral part of serving you by establishing and maintaining your benefits. On a day-to-day basis we collect information from employees and we receive information from employers, insurance companies and a variety of other sources about you.

As part of our relationship with you, we will continue to collect, use and share your personal information to:

We will only collect and use information that is pertinent to the effective and efficient administration of your benefits and we will only share information that we collect or that we receive from others for these purposes or as required or permitted by applicable law. When it is practical to do so we will collect the information we need directly from you. In those instances where information is collected from your employer or provided by other organizations such as your provincial medical plan or insurance companies, your personal information will be respected in exactly the same way as if we collected it from you personally. In collecting information from others we will be relying on them, where appropriate, concerning compliance with applicable privacy rules and procedures. And when we collect personal information we will always take great care to maintain its accuracy, confidentiality and security.

You should know that even within GroupHEALTH only specifically authorized personnel have access to your information. Our systems and procedures are designed to prevent the loss, misuse, unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration or destruction of your information. We fully respect the consent you provided to collect, use, and disclose your information for the purposes we have outlined above. If you have any concerns about our practices or policies we would be pleased to talk with you. GroupHEALTH's Chief Privacy Officer can be reached at anytime during regular business hours toll free by calling 1-877-542-4110.