1. The Policy 248 Bondi Road Medical Centre
Our practice is 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 the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (‘the Privacy Act’). Our policy is to inform you of:
the kinds of information that we collect and hold, which, as a medical practice, is likely to be ‘health information’ for the purposes of the Privacy Act;
how we collect and hold personal information;
the purposes for which we collect, hold, use and disclose personal information;
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
3. How do we collect and hold personal information?
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 comply with our legal obligations, including, but not limited to, mandatory notification of communicable diseases or mandatory reporting under applicable child protection legislation.
to help us manage our accounts and administrative services, including billing, arrangements with health funds, pursuing unpaid accounts, management of our ITC systems
for consultations with other doctors and allied health professional involved in your healthcare;
to obtain, analyse and discuss test results from diagnostic and pathology laboratories
for identification and insurance claiming
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. Any changes to the Policy/ Confidentiality
This Policy will be reviewed regularly to ensure that we are conducting all of our practises with the highest professionalism and according to the Australian Law.