Privacy Policy
This medical practice collects information from you for the primary purpose of providing quality health care. We require you to provide us with your personal details and a full medical history so that we may properly assess, diagnose, treat and be proactive in your health care needs. This means we will use the information you provide in the following way:
Administrative purposes in running our medical practice.
Billing purposes, including compliance with Medicare and Health Insurance Commission requirements.
Disclosure to others involved in your health care, including treating doctors and specialists outside this medical practice. This may occur through referral to other doctors, or for medical tests and in the reports or results returned to us following the referrals.
Details of your name, address and phone number may be passed onto debt collection agencies if necessary to recover outstanding dues.
On occasions the practice undertakes training of students, or research activities. In these instances:
Disclosure to other doctors in the practice, locums and by Registrars attached to the practice for the purpose of patient care and teaching. Please let us know if you do not want your records accessed for these purposes, and we will note your record accordingly.
As part of this practice’s commitment to improve the quality of care the practice audits the treatment and outcomes of the care delivered to its patients. This usually involves all components of care for a particular disease, including that by other practitioners and institutions. When required, care plans are discussed with other doctors and health care professionals in a multidisciplinary meeting to ensure a coordinated approach. If you do not wish your care to be audited or discussed at multidisciplinary meetings please advise your doctor.
Disclosure for research and quality assurance activities to improve individual and community health care and practice management. You will be informed when such activities are being conducted and given the opportunity to “opt out” of any involvement.
Introduction
We are committed to protecting the privacy of patient information and to handling your personal information in a responsible manner in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), the Privacy Amendment (Enhancing Privacy Protection) Act 2012, the Australian Privacy Principles and relevant State and Territory privacy legislation (referred to as privacy legislation).
This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use and disclose your personal information, how you may access that information and how you may seek the correction of any information. It also explains how you may make a complaint about a breach of privacy legislation.
This Privacy Policy is current from 02/06/2020 and is reviewed annually. From time to time we may make changes to our policy, processes and systems in relation to how we handle your personal information. We will update this Privacy Policy to reflect any changes. Those changes will be available on our website and in the practice.
Collection
We collect information that is necessary and relevant to provide you with medical care and treatment, and manage our medical practice. This information may include your name, address, date of birth, gender, health information, family history, credit card and direct debit details and contact details. This information may be stored on our computer medical records system and/or in handwritten medical records.
Wherever practicable we will only collect information from you personally. However, we may also need to collect information from other sources such as treating specialists, radiologists, pathologists, hospitals, other health care providers, and the Myhealth record system.
We collect information in various ways, such as over the phone, or in writing, in person in our practice or over the internet if you transact with us on our website. This information may be collected by medical and non-medical staff.
In emergency situations we may also need to collect information from your relatives or friends.
We may be required by law to retain medical records for certain periods of time depending on your age at the time we provide services.
Use and Disclosure
This medical practice will treat your personal information as strictly private and confidential. We collect information from you for the primary purpose of providing quality health care. We require you to provide us with your personal details and a full medical history so that we may properly assess, diagnose, treat and be proactive in your health care needs. This means we will use the information you provide in the following way:
Administrative purposes in running our medical practice.
Billing purposes, including compliance with Medicare and Health Insurance Commission requirements.
Disclosure to others involved in your health care, including treating doctors and specialists outside this medical practice. This may occur through referral to other doctors, or for medical tests and in the reports or results returned to us following the referrals.
On occasions the practice undertakes training of students, or research activities. In these instances:
Disclosure to other doctors in the practice, locums and by Registrars attached to the practice for the purpose of patient care and teaching. Please let us know if you do not want your records accessed for these purposes, and we will note your record accordingly.
As part of this practice’s commitment to improve the quality of care the practice audits the treatment and outcomes of the care delivered to its patients. This usually involves all components of care for a particular disease, including that by other practitioners and institutions. When required, care plans are discussed with other doctors and health care professionals in a multidisciplinary meeting to ensure a coordinated approach. If you do not wish your care to be audited or discussed at multidisciplinary meetings please advise your doctor.
Disclosure for research and quality assurance activities to improve individual and community health care and practice management. You will be informed when such activities are being conducted and given the opportunity to “opt out” of any involvement.
There are circumstances where we may be permitted or required by law to disclose your personal information to third parties. For example, to Medicare, Police, insurers, solicitors, government regulatory bodies, tribunals, courts of law, hospitals, debt collection agents, the electronic transfer of prescriptions service or to the Myhealth record system. We may also from time to time provide statistical data to third parties for research purposes.
We may disclose information about you to outside contractors to carry out activities on our behalf such as an IT service provider, solicitor or debt collection agent. We impose security and confidentiality requirements on how they handle your personal information. Outside contractors are required not to use information about you for any purpose except for those activities we have asked them to perform.
Data Quality and Security
We will take reasonable steps to ensure that your personal information is accurate, complete, up to date and relevant. For this purpose our staff may ask you to confirm that your contact details are correct when you attend a consultation. We request that you let us know if any of the information we hold about you is incorrect or out of date.
Personal information that we hold is protected by:
securing our premises;
placing passwords and varying access levels on databases to limit access and protect electronic information from unauthorised interference, access, modification and disclosure; and
providing locked cabinets and rooms for the storage of physical records.
Corrections
If you believe that the information we have about you is not accurate, complete or up to date, we ask that you contact us in writing (see details below).
Access
You are entitled to request access to your medical records. We request that you put your request in writing and we will respond to it within a reasonable time.
There may be a fee for the administrative costs of retrieving and providing you with copies of your medical records.
We may deny access to your medical records in certain circumstances permitted by law, for example, if disclosure may cause a serious threat to your health or safety. We will always tell you why access is denied and the options you have to respond to our decision.
Complaints
If you have a complaint about the privacy of your personal information (including complaints about our use of the Myhealth record system), we request that you contact us in writing. Upon receipt of a complaint we will consider the details and attempt to resolve it in accordance with our complaints handling procedures.
If you are dissatisfied with our handling of a complaint or the outcome you may make an application to the Australian Information Commissioner or the Privacy Commissioner in your State or Territory.
Overseas Transfer of Data
TBA
Use of cookies
Our website uses cookies. A cookie is a small piece of data or a text file that is downloaded to your computer or mobile device when you access certain websites. Cookies may contain text that can be read by the web server that delivered the cookie to you. The text contained in the cookie generally consists of a sequence of letters and numbers that uniquely identifies your computer or mobile device; it may contain other information as well. By selecting 'OKAY' on our website's cookie notice, or continuing to scroll or our website, you agree to & accept our use of cookies on this website, and you are giving us, and third parties we partner with, permission to place, store, and access some or all the cookies described below on your computer.
Most web browsers can be set to disable the use of cookies. However, if you disable cookies, you may not be able to access features on our website correctly or at all. More information on the Squarespace Cookies Policy can be found here.
Squarespace Analytics Tools
We use Squarespace tracking tools to improve the performance and features of our Website. These tracking tools are designed to collect only Non-Personal Information about your use of our Website. However, you understand that such tools are created and managed by parties outside our control. As such, we are not responsible for what information is actually captured by such third parties or how such third parties use and protect that information. Squarespace Privacy Policy can be found here.
Google Analytics Privacy Notice
Our website uses Google Analytics to collect information about the use of our website. Google Analytics collects information from users such as age, gender, interests, demographics, how often they visit our website, what pages they visit, and what other websites they have used before coming to our website. We use the information we get from Google Analytics to analyze traffic, remarket our products and services to users, improve our marketing, advertising, and to improve our website.
Links to other Websites:
Our Website may from time to time contain links to third-party websites. Inclusion of links for any website on our Website does not mean that we endorse, guarantee, warrant, or recommend the services, information, content, and/or data of such third-party websites. The Specialist Centre Ballarat has no control over the legal documents and privacy practices of third-party websites; you access any third-party websites at your own risk. We recommend that you review the privacy notice and terms and conditions of those websites to fully understand what information is collected and how it is used.
Linking to our Website:
You may provide links to our Website provided that (a) you do not remove or obscure any portion of our Website by framing or otherwise, (b) your website does not engage in illegal or pornographic activities, and (c) you cease providing links to our Website immediately upon our request.
Contact
Please direct any queries, complaints, requests for access to medical records to: Ms Kath Blackmore, Practice Manager, Specialist Centre Ballarat via phone (03) 5331 8289 or email kath@scballarat.com.au