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Important Notices Teacher Retirement System of Texas Notice of Privacy Practices The Teacher Retirement System of Texas administers your health benefits plan and your pension plan pursuant to federal and Texas law. This notice is required by the privacy regulations adopted pursuant to the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 as amended by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act of 2009. This notice describes how medical information about you may be used and disclosed and how you can get access to this information. Please review this notice carefully. This notice also sets out TRS%u2019s legal obligations concerning your health information. Additionally, this notice describes your rights to control your health information. Federal law requires TRS to maintain and protect the privacy of your health information. Your protected health information is individually identifiable health information, including genetic information and demographic information, collected from you or created or received by TRS that relates to: %u2022 your past, present or future physical or mental health or condition; %u2022 the health care you receive; or %u2022 the past, present or future payment for the provision of health care for you. Unsecured protected health information is protected health information that is not secured through the use of a technology or methodology that renders the protected health information unusable, unreadable or indecipherable. The effective date of this notice was April 14, 2003, and it was revised on Sept. 1, 2020. Texas law already makes your member information, including your protected health information, confidential. Therefore, following the original implementation of this notice and the implementation of this notice as revised, TRS did not and is not changing the way it protects your information. On April 14, 2003, the new rights and other terms in this notice, as originally drafted, automatically applied. Likewise, as subsequently revised, the rights and other terms of this notice continue to automatically apply. You do not need to do anything to get privacy protection for your health information. Federal law requires that TRS provide you with this notice about its privacy practices and its legal duties regarding your protected health information. This notice explains how, when and why TRS uses and discloses your protected health information. By law, TRS must follow the privacy practices that are described in the most current privacy notice. TRS reserves the right to change its privacy practices and the terms of this notice at any time. Changes will be effective for all of your protected health information that TRS maintains. If TRS makes an important change that affects what is in this notice, TRS will mail you a new notice within 60 days of the change. This notice is on the TRS website, and TRS will post any new notice on its website at www.trs.texas.gov.34 www.bcbstx.com/trsactivecare