If you are looking to appoint or remove a representative who can make health insurance decisions on your behalf, refer to the Personal Representative Appointment and Authorization to Release Protected Health Information form. This type of representative serves a different purpose from an interoperability representative.
What is an interoperability personal representative?
Interoperability refers to the process health insurers, providers and apps use to securely exchange a person’s health care information with one another using a secure digital technology called an application programming interface (API). An interoperability personal representative can decide if Wellmark is allowed share or request a member’s data as part of that process.
Members — or someone authorized to make decisions on their behalf, such as a parent, legal guardian or someone with power of attorney (POA) — can appoint or remove interoperability representatives at any time.
Parents and legal guardians of members under age 12 will have interoperability representative authority for their dependents by default. While the member is 12–17 years old, parents and legal guardians may continue to have interoperability representative status unless the member’s health record includes sensitive medical information️, at which point they would need be appointed as an interoperability representative to manage any of their data sharing preferences.
Sensitive medical information
In the context of interoperability, “sensitive medical information” refers to records related to mental health, substance use disorders, reproductive health, AIDS, or genetics.
Appoint an interoperability representative
- Appoint an interoperability representative for yourself (Form A) — Complete and submit this form if you're 18 years old or older and would like to appoint an interoperability representative for yourself. If you're under 18 or appointing a representative for someone else, use Form B.
- Appoint an interoperability representative for someone else (Form B) — Complete and submit this form to appoint an interoperability representative for someone else. Members between the ages of 12–17 must use this form to appoint interoperability representatives for themselves.
- Note: To appoint an interoperability representative for someone else, you must have legal authority to make decisions on their behalf — such as being their parent, legal guardian or someone with medical power of attorney (POA) for the member.
Remove an interoperability representative
Complete and submit the interoperability representative removal form to remove someone as your representative or remove yourself as someone else's representative.
When representatives may be removed
A person’s interoperability representative status may automatically end in these situations:
- When the represented member turns 12 and has sensitive medical information in their records
- When the represented member turns 18, regardless of what’s in their records
However, that person may be re-appointed as an interoperability representative at any time following these events (if the represented member still has active coverage with Wellmark).