Privacy Protection and confidentiality of health information is essential for quality health care. We are committed to best practice in relation to the management of information we collect.
This practice has developed a policy to protect patient privacy in compliance with privacy legislation.
Our policy is to inform you of:
The kinds of personal information that we collect and hold;
- How we collect and hold personal information;
- The purposes for which we collect, hold, use and disclose personal information;
- How you may access your personal information and seek the correction of that information;
- How you may complain about a breach of the Australian Privacy Principles and how we will deal with such a complaint;
What kinds of personal information do we collect?
- Personal Details (Your name, address, date of birth, Medicare number and contact details)
- Your health information and other sensitive information (Medical history, notes made during the course of a medical consultation)
- Results and reports received from other health service providers
How do we collect and hold personal information?
- We will generally collect personal information:
- From you directly when you provide your details to us;
- From a person responsible for you
- From third parties where the Privacy Act or other law allows it
Why do we collect, hold, use and disclose personal information?
- In general, we may collect, hold, use and disclose your personal information for the following purposes:
- To provide health services to you, including treating doctors, pathology services, radiology services and other services outside this practice.
- To communicate with you
- To comply with our legal obligations which may include mandatory notification of communicable diseases or pursuant to a subpoena
- To help us manage our accounts and administrative services (such as financial claims and payments)
How can you access and correct your personal information?
Subject to the exceptions set out in the Privacy Act, you may seek access to and correction of the personal information which we hold about you in accordance with our access policy.
We ask that you put your request to access your medical record in writing and our practice will respond within 30 days. If a fee is charged for providing access, you will be advised of the cost in advance.
We aim to ensure the information we hold about you is accurate, complete, up to date and relevant. To this end our staff may ask you to confirm that your personal details are correct when you attend a consultation. Please let us know if any of the information we hold about you is incorrect or not up to date.
Overseas Transfer of Data
We will not transfer your personal information to an overseas recipient unless we have your consent or we are required to do so by law.
Updates to this Policy
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.
Please feel free to take this policy with you.