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 July 2022. 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, Medicare card and contact details. This information may be stored on our computer medical records system.
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 and other health care providers.
We collect information in various ways, such as over the phone or in writing, in person in our clinic or over the internet if you transact with us online. This informationmay 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
We will treat your personal information as strictly private and confidential. We will only use or disclose it for purposes directly related to your care and treatment, or in ways that you would reasonably expect that we may use it for your ongoing care and treatment. For example, the disclosure of blood test results to your specialist or requests for x-rays.
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, or debt collection agents.
We may also from time to time provide statistical data to third parties for research purposes and this will be de-identified.
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, compete, 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
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, 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 contact the to the Australian Information Commissioner https://www.oaic.gov.au/ or the Privacy Commissioner in your State or Territory.
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.
Email and SMS – For patients
Our patients will be given the option of being contacted by electronic means such as via sms
All new and existing patients in the practice will be given information on our electronic communication policy, and are asked to provide signed consent to agree or disagree to be communicated with in this manner.
It is acknowledged by the practice that consent is implied if the patient initiates electronic communication with the practice.
Reception staff are to check each patient has this information on their record on arrival to the practice, along with the verification of their name, date of birth and address.
The signed consent will be scanned and recorded in the patient electronic record and their response recorded on the practice software.
The consent form will state that the practice may use this mode of communication:
- to send reminders for a scheduled appointment.
- when the patient needs to make an appointment to review a test result.
- as a reminder that a generic preventative screening test (for example, flu vaccine, skin-check, cervical screening) is due.
Further information will state that the practice:
- cannot guarantee confidentiality of information transferred via email (if using encryption, please state how your encryption works).
- will comply with the Australian Privacy Principles and the Privacy Act 1988.
- communications will not contain sensitive information, due to the risk of confidential information being accessed inadvertently or intentionally by a third party.
- communications will not contain results that only the general practitioner should be divulging in a follow-up appointment, ie abnormal results, education concerning a new diagnosis, etc
- communication will not entail promotion of any product and/or preventative health care (as some patients can interpret this as an advertisement)
Patients will be advised through the consent form that:
- patients should not use email to contact the practice in an emergency (also included in the automatic email response).
Our practice email account for patients and stakeholders for non-urgent communication with our practice is pm@lyndarumfamilyclinic.com
This email account will the routinely checked throughout the business day by the delegated authority, Practice Manager
- at the start of business
- midday
- one hour before end of business
The email message will then be forwarded to the appropriate team member for response. Communication conducted with a patient via electronic means will be added to the patient’s medical record by the team member resolving the enquiry.
Email and SMS between the practice and the patient will form part of the medical record and need to be included, as must any actions taken in response to the message. (Some electronic health record systems can perform this feature automatically.)
Contact
Please direct any queries, complaints, requests for access to medical records to:
The Practice Manager 03 9408 7524