PRIVACY & LEGALS
Personal Information Policy and your Doctor: You have access to the information contained in your personal medical record. You are free to ask the doctors about any aspect of your health care including information in your medical record or request changes to your medical information. You will need to discuss this with your doctor.
Information can be provided to you with an up to date summary of your care.
You may request access to your personal medical record but your doctor will need to remove any information provided by others on a confidential basis. Your doctor will also need to consider the risk of any physical or mental harm to you or any other person which may result from disclosure of your personal health information.
You may be charged an administration fee for the provision of this information. Personal information is only accessed by authorised staff.
The Federal Privacy Act
The Fedral Privacy Act incorprated 10 National Privacy Principles (NPP's) that set out rules for the handling of personal information in the private sector.
In the interests of providing quality health care this practice has developed a privacy policy that complies with the new privacy legislation and the NPP's.
The 10 NPP's are:
- Collection
- Use & Disclosure
- Data Quality
- Data Security
- Openness
- Access & Correction
- Identifiers
- Anonymity
- Transborder data flows
- Sensitive Information
Collecting Information
It is necessary for us to collect personal information from you in order to attend to your health needs and for administration purposes.
Sensitive information
Your personal health information is sensitive information. This means that generally your consent will be sought to collect health information that is necessary to make accurate medical diagnosis, for appropriate treatment and preventative health care.
Use and Disclosure
Your personal health information is used or disclosed only for purposes directly related to your health care. In the interests of the highest quality of care, this may be shared with other health providers who are involved with your care. There may be some circumstances when information may be disclosed without patient consent, these include:
- Emergencies
- Providing Medicare or private health funds with information for billing and medical rebate purposes.
- By law, doctors are sometimes required to disclose information for the public interest e.g. Mandatory reporting of communicable diseases.
- It may be necessary to disclose your personal health information to fulfill medical indemnity insurance obligation.
Your details, medical records and consultations within this practice are kept strictly confidential. Generally your personal health information is only accessed by authorised personnel and will not be released without your written permission. Only de-identified data may be used for research purposes.
Data Security
Your personal health information is securly stored and only accessed when necessary for your care. Your consent is required when transferring to another practice - your new doctor will normally arrange this with you. Your records are held for a minimum of seven (7) years after your last attendanceor up to the age of 25 years for a child.
Transborder Data Flows
Your privacy is protected nationally by the provacy laws. The practice will take steps to protect patient privacy if information is to be sent interstate or outside Australia.
Identifiers
These are how we identify you without using your name eg. Medicare number. We will limit the use of identifiers assigned to patients by Commonwealth Government agencies to fulfill our obligations to those agencies.
Openness
This practice has made this website available to inform you of our policies. If you would like more information on the type of personal information how we hold, collect, use and disclose that information please ask your doctor or the receptionist.
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