HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) effective April 14, 2003

HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) is a required law issued by the government in which Equity-League as an organization must implement privacy rules to insure the security of our members’ health information that participate under the health plan. Please be aware that this law became effective on April 14, 2003. One of the most important aspects of HIPAA is securing your PHI. PHI (Protected Health Information) is any health information that relates to a particular individual. Please refer to Equity-League’s HIPAA Privacy Notice for a further explanation of what HIPAA states, and how if affects you.

Normally, when you contacted the Fund Office, you would provide us with your Social Security number to identify you and assist you with any questions. With the changes under the HIPAA Privacy Act, you must now provide us with your union membership identification, along with the last four digits of your Social Security number when contacting the Fund Office. If a member’s spouse contacts the Fund Office, then he or she will still have to provide us with the union membership identification number, along with the member’s last four digits of the Social Security number. If you do not know what your union membership identification is, you can either contact Actors' Equity Association’s Membership Department, or contact the Fund Office. If you contact the Fund Office, we will use an alternate way of verifying who you are without requesting your Social Security number. Once we identify you, we will mail your union membership identification number to the record of address we have on file in order for you to contact the Fund Office for future requests.

We have provided you with a listing of forms that are available to you based on the regulation issued under HIPAA. Please refer to our HIPAA Privacy Notice, which explains what the forms can be used for. These forms will also be available in the Fund Office.

If you have any questions, please contact us at the Fund Office, (212) 869-9380, or toll free (800) 344-5220.

HIPAA forms are available online here.