The Privacy Act 1988 requires medical practitioners to obtain consent from their patients to collect, use, and disclose patients’ person information.
By providing personal information to us, you consent to our collection, use and disclosure of your personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy and any other arrangements that apply between us. We may change our Privacy Policy from time to time by publishing changes to it on our website. We encourage you to check our website periodically to ensure that you are aware of our current Privacy Policy.
Personal information includes information or an opinion about an individual that is reasonably identifiable. For example, this may include your name and contact details.
Collection of information
We may collect the following types of personal information:
- your name, date of birth, mailing or street address, email address, personal and work telephone number, and other contact details;
- your device ID, device type, geo-location information, computer and connection information, statistics on page views, traffic to and from the sites, ad data, IP address and standard web log information;
- details of the services we have provided to you or that you have enquired about, including any additional information necessary to deliver those services and respond to your enquiries;
- any information that you provide to us when requesting an appointment through our website;
- any additional information relating to you that you provide to us directly or indirectly through our website; and/or
- any other personal information that may be required in order to facilitate your dealings with us.
We may also collect personal information from you that falls within the definition of ‘sensitive information’ under the Privacy Act – in particular, information or an opinion about your:
- health information, including genetic information, your medical history and other relevant information such as recreational drug use and alcohol use; and
- sexual orientation or practices.
We may collect these types of personal information either directly from you, or from third parties.
We may collect this information when you:
- use our website;
- become a patient;
- enquire about or receive services from us;
- communicate with us through correspondence, social networking sites (eg Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), chats, email, online chat bots, our website, or when you share information with us from other social applications, services or websites;
- interact with our sites, services, content, advertising, and marketing campaigns; or
- consent to us receiving or collecting information about you from your General Practitioner and other medical practitioners.
Use and disclosure
With your consent your information may be used and disclosed for purposes such as:
- Account keeping and billing purposes
- Referral to another medical practitioner or health care provider
- Sending of specimens such as blood samples for analysis
- Referral to a hospital for treatment and/or advice
- Advice on treatment options
- The management of our practice
- Quality assurance including developing if a data base for surveillance of treatment outcomes practice accreditation and complaint handling
- To meet our obligations or notification to our medical defence organisation or insurers.
- To prevent or lessen a serious threat to an individuals life health or safety where legally required to do so, such as producing records to court mandatory reporting of child abuse or the notification of diagnosis of certain communicable diseases.
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 medical history so that we may properly assess, diagnose, treat and be proactive in your health care needs. We will use the information you provide in the following ways:
- 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 the medical practice as advised by you.
By agreeing to this privacy policy, you agree to the following.
- I understand the reasons why my information must be collected.
- I understand that I am not obliged to provide any information requested of me, but that my failure to do so might compromise the quality of the health care and treatment given to me.
- I am aware of my right to access the information collected about me, except in some circumstances where access might legitimately be withheld. I understand I will be given an explanation in these circumstances.
- I understand that if my information is to be used for any purpose other than the above, my consent will be sought.
- I consent to the handling of my information by this practice for the purposes set out above, subject to any limitations on access or disclosure of which I may notify this practice in writing.
Data security
We may hold your personal information in either electronic or hard copy form. We take reasonable steps to protect your personal information from misuse, interference and loss, as well as unauthorised access, modification or disclosure and we use a number of physical, administrative, personnel and technical measures to protect your personal information. In particular:
- personal information, including patient records and clinical data, is stored in a secure server with encryption and password protection;
- personal information stored in our secure server is backed up to a secure encrypted commercial backup software;
- our secure server is protected by anti-malware software;
- access to our information systems is controlled through identity and access management, including password protection;
- we require website users to not take any action that would constitute a breach of the privacy rights of an individual in our Website Terms and Conditions; and
- we require contractors that might have access to your personal information to enter into a binding legal contract requiring them to keep that information confidential.
However, we cannot guarantee the security of your personal information.
Disclosure of personal information outside Australia
We may disclose personal information outside of Australia to third party suppliers of cloud-based storage and email solutions (eg Dropbox, Google/Gmail) located in the United States of America.
When you provide your personal information to us, you consent to the disclosure of your information outside of Australia and acknowledge that we are not required to ensure that overseas recipients handle that personal information in compliance with the Privacy Act. We will, however, take reasonable steps to ensure that any overseas recipient will deal with such personal information in a way that is consistent with the Privacy Act (including the Australian Privacy Principles).
Accessing or correcting your personal information
You can access the personal information we hold about you by contacting us. Accessing your health information may be as simple as requesting a copy of your latest pathology and/or imaging results from your medical practitioner during the course of a standard medical consultation.
Sometimes, we may not be able to provide you with access to all of your personal information and, where this is the case, we will tell you why. We may also need to verify your identity when you request your personal information.
If you think that any personal information we hold about you is inaccurate, out of date, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading, please contact us and we will take reasonable steps to ensure that it is corrected.
Contact Us
For further information about our Privacy Policy or practices, or to access or correct your personal information, or make a complaint, please contact us using the following contact details:
By mail:
GastroHub Specialist Centre
12/56 Neridah Street
Chatswood NSW 2067