Portico Benefit Services complies with applicable Federal civil rights laws and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, disability, or gender in regard to health benefits. Portico does not exclude people or treat them differently because of race, color, national origin, age, disability, or gender.
Portico Benefit Services, plan sponsor of the ELCA Health Plan, provides, upon request, free communication assistance services to facilitate effective communication, including:

• Telephone, email, and standard mail options
• Written information in other formats, such as large print
• Free language interpreter services to people whose primary language is not English
• Information written in other languages

If you need these services, contact us at 800.352.2876 or by calling the number on your Portico Health ID card.

Filing a Discrimination Grievance

If you believe that Portico has failed to provide these services or discriminated in another way on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, disability, or gender, you can file a grievance with our Health Services Manager.

By email
privacycontact@porticobenefits.org

By mail
Mike Imgrund
Portico Benefit Services
7700 France Ave. S., Ste. 350
Minneapolis, MN 55435-2802

If you need help filing a grievance, please call Portico at 800.352.2876.

You can also file a civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights.

File online
Office for Civil Rights Complaint Portal at ocrportal.hhs.gov/ocr/portal/lobby.jsf

By phone
1.800.368.1019
1.800.537.7697 (TDD)

By mail
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
200 Independence Avenue SW
Room 509F
HHH Building
Washington, DC 20201

Complaint forms are available online at hhs.gov/ocr/office/file/index.html.

To help prevent unauthorized access, maintain data accuracy, and facilitate the correct use of information, we have put in place strict physical, electronic, and administrative procedures to safeguard your information. Only authorized employees and representatives are permitted to see and use your information. Those who use your information are required to follow established standards, procedures, and laws.

Encryption Software

We use industry standard encryption to protect your personal information when you visit our website. This technology minimizes the risk of anyone eavesdropping on your information as it passes between your computer and our systems. You can tell a page is secure when:

• The address begins with https:// instead of http://. The “s” means “secured”.
• Depending on your browser, you may see a small padlock icon in the lower-right corner.
• Your personal information is never displayed or collected without robust security measures. We are committed to protecting your privacy.

What You Can Do

It’s smart to get in the habit of signing out and closing your browser when you are finished using the Portico website or any other website to which you’ve signed in. Signing out and closing the browser protects your personal information in the event that someone else uses the computer immediately after you.

To sign out, click “Sign out” at the top of any page. If you forget to sign out, you’ll be signed out automatically after 30 minutes of inactivity on our website.

Brand, product, and service names used throughout this website are trademarks of their respective owners.

“S&P 500^®” is a trademark of the McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., and has been licensed for use by Portico Benefit Services. The Portico S&P 500 Stock Index Fund is not sponsored, endorsed, sold or promoted by Standard & Poor’s, and Standard & Poor’s makes no representation regarding the advisability of investing in the fund.

Our primary goal in collecting information about you is to give you a meaningful and personalized website experience. The information we collect allows us to provide better service to you by tailoring our communications to match your interests.

Information You Explicitly Provide

To establish and manage your account or to participate in various online programs offered, you’ll be asked to provide certain personally identifiable information, such as your name, email address, phone number, and other identifying items. You can choose not to provide this information, but then you might not be able to participate in some of our services or offerings. If you choose to provide information and register with this website, your information will be kept on file for audit purposes for at least as long as regulatory requirements dictate. Our data retention requirements don’t expire upon cancellation or revocation of your account.

Information We Automatically Collect

We use common Internet technologies such as cookies and beacons to ensure the integrity of our website and to customize portions of the website for you.

Cookies

Cookies are small pieces of information stored by your browser on your computer’s hard drive, at a website’s request. Our cookies don’t contain any personal information, but are used primarily:

• To keep track of temporary information. For example, cookies allow us to keep track of the forms you upload and download.
• To register you in programs. Cookies allow us to remember you when you sign in to the places on our website that require membership.
• To help us understand the size of our audience and traffic patterns.
• To collect and record information about what you viewed on our website and what you viewed in our email.
• To manage and present website information and the pictures displayed on your computer.
• To deliver information specific to your interests.

Cookies and Analytics

We utilize services provided by Google Analytics to collect information about the effectiveness of our website and help improve the services we provide to users of our website. Google Analytics may use cookies, web beacons, pixels, or other technologies to collect information. These tools allow Google to track some data relating to your computer and your Internet browsing on our website or other sites that participate in Google’s networks. This data includes your computer’s IP address; the website addresses visited; the browser type used; the computer’s operating system; and the date, time, and duration of the visit to each page. We don’t permit Google to collect any personal information about you, such as your name, email, or physical address. For more information about these specialized cookies and other technologies, we suggest you review Google’s privacy policy.

Disabling Cookies

If you are uncomfortable with the collection of such information through the use of cookies, we recommend disabling these features through your browser preferences, though please understand this will limit the performance and functionality of our website. Your browser documentation should provide specific procedures for disabling cookie support.

IP Addresses

We analyze IP addresses in the aggregate for system administration purposes and to gather broad demographic information. We don’t link IP addresses to your computer’s User ID.

Communities

Some of our websites may enable you to participate in public services such as discussion boards, chats, and live events. Please use discretion when posting personal information about yourself when using these services. Be aware that when you disclose personal information at these websites, such as your name, member name, and email address, the information may be collected and used by others to send unsolicited email. The services are open to the public, and what you post there can be seen by anyone and isn’t protected. We can’t control the comments that you may receive while you participate in these services. You may find other people’s comments to be offensive, harmful, or inaccurate.

Children’s Privacy

Protecting the online privacy of children is especially important, and those under the age of 13 are protected by federal law. For that reason, we don’t knowingly permit children to become registered members of our websites. We don’t knowingly collect or solicit personal information about children. If we ever include children under the age of 13 as part of our intended website audience, those specific web pages will, in accordance with the provisions of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), be clearly identified and provide an explicit privacy notice; and we’ll provide processes to obtain parental approval, provide access to information, and allow parents to request removal of their children’s personal information.

Content Usage

Portico encourages the reproduction of information on this website. Please use exact wording because of the specific nature of benefit plans and attribute the information to Portico Benefit Services, a ministry of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

In all cases, plan members’ rights under the ELCA health, retirement, disability, and survivor plans are governed by the plan’s document (the full, legal description of the plan). If the information on this website is found to be inconsistent with the plan document, the plan document will be considered the ruling document. Plan documents are available on this website and by contacting us at 800.352.2876 or mail@porticobenefits.org.

Outside Links

Some of our websites contain links to and from other websites; we aren’t responsible for the privacy practices of those websites. We encourage you to ascertain the privacy practices of those websites.