1. Introduction
This Privacy Policy explains how we handle personal information, including health information, about you.
We are committed to best practice in how we manage health and treatment information and other personal information about you.
We recognise that personal information about each of our patients is highly sensitive and confidential and that you expect us to handle it accordingly.
In Privacy Policy we also explain:
- why and how we exchange health information about you with other healthcare professionals and health service providers involved in the management of your healthcare
- why and how we handle and share health information about you as pseudonymised information, being health information where your name or phone number or other direct identifiers are removed and a secure pseudonym used instead
- why and how we retain, use, and share fully anonymised data.
References to we include members of our clinical team from time to time
To keep this Privacy Policy to manageable length, we do not explain other legal obligations that we take to take proper care of health information that you entrust to us. These obligations include our duty to maintain patient confidentiality and privacy under provisions of the federal Privacy Act 1988 (C’th), the Health Records and Information Privacy Act 2002 (NSW) and the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law.
2. What kinds of personal information do we collect?
The type of information we may collect and hold includes:
- Your name, address, date of birth, email, and contact details
- Medicare number , DVA number and other government identifiers, although we will not use these for the purposes of identifying you in our practice
- Other health information about you, including:
- notes of your symptoms or diagnosis and the treatment given to you
- your specialist reports and test results
- your appointment and billing details
- your prescriptions and other pharmaceutical purchases
- your dental records
- your genetic information
- your healthcare identifier
- any other information about your race, sexuality, or religion, when collected by a health service provider.
3. How do we collect personal information?
We collect, store, access and share sensitive personal information about you using our in-clinic patient information systems.
We will generally collect personal information:
- from you directly when you provide your details to us. This might be via a face to face discussion, telephone conversation, registration form or online form
- from a person responsible for you
- from third parties where the Privacy Act or other law allows it – this may include, but is not limited to: other members of your treating team, diagnostic centres, specialists, hospitals, the My Health Record system, electronic prescription services, Medicare, your health insurer, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
4. Why do we collect, hold, use, and disclose personal information?
In general, we collect, hold, use, and disclose your personal information for the following purposes:
- to provide health services to you
- to communicate with you in relation to the health service being provided to you
- to maintain a record of your healthcare, and enable us to compare your results with other patient’s results and continually refine best practice
- to comply with our legal obligations, including, but not limited to, mandatory notification of communicable diseases
- to help us manage our accounts and administrative services, including billing, arrangements with health funds, pursuing unpaid accounts, management of our systems
- for consultations with hospital and clinic staff, other doctors and allied health professionals involved in your healthcare
- to obtain, analyse and discuss test results from diagnostic and pathology laboratories
- for identification and insurance claiming
- if you have a My Health Record, to upload your personal information to, and download your personal information from, the My Health Record system
- for e-prescribing
- to liaise with your health fund, government, and regulatory bodies such as Medicare, the Department of Veteran\’s Affairs, and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) (if you make a privacy complaint to the OAIC), as necessary.
5. How can you access and correct your personal information?
You have a right to seek access to, and correction of the personal information which we hold about you.
For details on how to access and correct your health record, please contact our practice as noted below under ‘Contact Details’.
6. Privacy related questions and complaints
If you have any questions about privacy-related issues or wish to complain about a breach of the Australian Privacy Principles or the handling of your personal information by us, you may lodge your complaint in writing to (see below for details).
We will promptly respond to your request.
If you are dissatisfied with our response, you may refer the matter to the OAIC:
T: 1300 363 992
E: enquiries@oaic.gov.au
F: +61 2 9284 9666
P: GPO Box 5218
Sydney NSW 2001
Website: https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/privacy-complaints/
7. Updates
This Policy will be reviewed from time to time to take account of new laws and technology, changes to our operations and other necessary developments.
Updates will be published on the clinic’s website.
8. Contact details for privacy related issues
Please ask any of us if you have any concerns or questions about any of the above.
You are of course entitled to know everything about how we look after your health information, as well as knowing about how we work together with you on your health.
Or you can contact us here by using our contact form.
This Privacy Policy was last updated on 15 April 2022.