Privacy Policy

This document explains how we collect and manage your personal information.

We respect your rights to privacy and have a legal obligation to follow the provisions of the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and other relevant State and Territory legislation in the handling your personal information. The rules that we must follow under the Act, namely the Australian Privacy Principles, cover areas including the collection, use, disclosure, quality and security of personal information.

Personal Information

This is information that can be used to personally identify you. It may include your name, address, telephone number, email address and a profession. Our privacy policy covers all people who use our services or otherwise provide their personal information to us.

We may collect the following types of personal information:

Name;
Age or date of birth;
Medicare number, DVA number, Health Care Card number, health fund details;
Pension number;
Current drugs or treatments used by you;
Information relevant to your medical care, including but not limited to your previous and current medical history and your family medical history (clinical information only);
Your ethnic background;
Your profession or job title;
The name of any health service provider or medical specialist to whom you are referred, copies of any medical letters, referrals or reports;
Any other information relating to you that you provide to us or through our representative, medical or allied health professionals providing services to us.

We collect your personal information directly from you in the following ways:

By you completing a patient registration form;
As disclosed by you during the course of a consultation in our clinic;
Through your access and use of our website.

We may also collect personal information from third parties, which may include:

Information provided on your behalf with your consent;
From a health service provider who refers you to medical practitioners at our practice;
From health service providers to whom you are referred;
From your employer or prospective employer
Law enforcement agencies and other government entities.

If we do not receive this personal information some or all of the following may occur:

We may not be able to provide the requested services to you, either to the same standard or at all;
Your diagnosis and treatment may be inaccurate or incomplete.

We collect personal information about you so that we can provide the best possible health care. We collect, hold, use and disclose your personal information for the following purposes:

For us to provide medical services and treatment to you, and enable you to be attended by our medical practitioner;
For administrative and billing purposes;
To update our records and keep your contact details up to date;
To process and respond to any complaint made by you;
To comply with any law or regulations, or in co-operation with any governmental authority;
For the purpose of data research and analysis, and for the purpose of sending you direct communications relating to your health;
For inclusion in a recall register to be advised of follow up visits and medical updates;
For the purpose of reporting to your employer or prospective employer, their authorized representative and their insurer in the case of a work-related consultation or service;
To meet obligations of notification to our medical defence organisations or insurers.

We may disclose information about you to our third party contractors and service providers, who carry out activities on our behalf (such as practice management software providers or our communication platform provider). We require any such third parties to only use your personal information for the purposes of performing the services or activities we have engaged them to provide.

Your personal information will not be shared, sold, rented or disclosed other than as described in this document or as permitted under the Act.

We may send communications and information regarding our services that we consider may be of interest to you. These communications may be sent in various forms, including mail, SMS, fax and email, in accordance with all applicable marketing laws, such as the Spam Act 2003 (Cth). If you indicate a preferred method of communication, we will endeavour to use that method whenever practical.

We may use de-identified information (derived from your personal information) for internal teaching purposes or to monitor, evaluate, plan and improve the services provided at our practice.

Should you at any time wish to withdraw your consent for your personal information to be part of a de-identified information database, or do not wish to receive communications from us regarding services, please notify our Privacy Officer using the contact details below providing your full name, date of birth and address. Withdrawing this consent will not affect the relationship between you and your l\medical practitioner, nor will it hinder your ability to access services at our practice.

You may request access to any personal information we hold about you at any time by contacting us. There may be instances where we cannot grant you access to personal information, if for example the granting of access would interfere with the privacy of others or if it would result in a breach of confidentiality. In this case, we will give you written reasons for refusal. If you believe that the personal information we hold about you is incorrect incomplete or inaccurate, then a written request should be sent to us so that it can be amended. If we do not agree that there are grounds for amendment, then we will add a note to the personal information stating that you disagree with it.

Breach of Privacy

If you believe that your privacy has been breached, please contact our Privacy Officer and provide details of the incident so that it can be investigated. Our procedure for investigating and dealing with privacy breaches is that the incident or complaint is dealt with immediately. If the issue cannot be resolved at this level, it will be escalated to a higher authority in our practice for review and resolution.

Security

We take care to ensure your personal information is protected from misuse, loss and unauthorized access or disclosure. We hold your information in electronic form. Personal information held as a hard copy is destroyed when no longer required.

Our website is linked to the internet which is inherently insecure, and we cannot provide any assurance regarding the security of transmission of information you communicate to us online. We also cannot guarantee that this information will not be intercepted while being transmitted over the internet, therefore any information, personal or otherwise which is sent to us online is transmitted at your own risk.

Making a Complaint

If you have any concerns or would like to make a complaint about how we handle your personal information, please contact the Privacy Officer (details below). Please include your name, email address and/or telephone number and clearly describe your concerns or complaint.

Your requests will be handled with complete confidentiality and we will endeavour to respond to your complaint within a reasonable time after it is made. You will be contacted after we receive your complaint to discuss and outline options in order to resolve the matter. Our aim is to resolve your concern in a timely and appropriate manner.

How to contact us

You can contact our Privacy Officer in the following ways:

Email: reception@drthomasgp.com Attention: Privacy Officer

Telephone: 1300 300 065