POPIA and what it means to you as a member of AMS

By now you have read much about the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) and you are aware that it is now enforced to protect your personal information. As a medical scheme, we have always treated our members' personal data with the greatest of care and protected it with the strictest security measures. Most of the necessary "POPIA requirements" have already been in place for a long time. The list below is not comprehensive but it does highlight some of these requirements. Other measures might have to be added in future, depending on how we communicate with you and which systems and tools we will use.

Measures to protect your personal information

• We ask that you regularly confirm and update your personal information and let us know when they change.
• You can only log in to the member log-in area with your previously verified log-in details.
• Our members' personal details are kept separate from other schemes or business units by our administrator Discovery Health and extensive IT security measures are in place to protect your data.
• We are encrypting our emails to you and have provided you with a secure inbox on our website for documents containing personal information. * We sometimes send you emails containing personal information in PDF attachments. For these emails, we will add an additional layer of security by means of encryption.
• This means that you will need a password (either your identity number or date of birth) to open and view the document. The encryption remains in place even if you forward the document to someone else, like your financial adviser or broker.

How we separate your and your beneficiaries' information:

• We require separate contact details for all dependants over the age of 18 in order to communicate with them independently. The Scheme is not allowed to communicate certain information pertaining to a dependant via the main member.
• Claims: the main member may have access to all the claims on the membership, but the spouse and/or dependant can only view their own personal claim information.
• Medical Savings Account balances: only the main member has access to this information, not the spouse or adult dependant. The spouse is, however, able to obtain this balance, should the main member provide permission for them to do so.
•  Chronic medications: the main member will only have access to his/her own chronic funding information and that of children under 18 years of age who are dependants on the membership.
• Dependants over the age of 18 will have to register separately for their chronic benefits - the main member may not register on their behalf. In addition: - the main member is entitled to know which other dependants on the membership have funding for their chronic condition/s, but they will not have access to the actual chronic condition or funding information of those dependants.

All beneficiaries are only allowed to access funding information for their particular chronic condition.

Dependants with consent (such as a spouse) are allowed to access the chronic funding of any children under 18 years of age who are beneficiaries on the membership.

Your responsibility

You also need to play your part. As a member of Anglo Medical Scheme, you have the duty to provide us with correct and up-to-date personal information and keep us updated if any of your details change. You also need to ensure your personal data stays secure, for example:

• Don't ever share your membership card or membership number with anybody except your Scheme or your trusted healthcare providers.
• Don't post any personal information on social media, such as a photo of your vaccination certificate with your ID number on it.
• Don't include personal information or medical information in discussions on social media, for example if you ask online for advice for a specialist to help you with your condition.
• If you allow a third party to engage with Anglo Medical Scheme on your behalf, whether it is your child, your parent or your broker, we need you to authorise us to do so, by completing a Third Party Disclosure form. You can phone the call centre to obtain the form to complete.

We have more information on the topic for you. In the footer of the Anglo Medical Scheme website you will find a link to our privacy page where we have compiled all information about how we treat your personal information.

Published: July 2021.