Dated: June 2014

 

Buderim Gastroenterology Centre Legal Obligations

Buderim Gastroenterology Centre is committed to ensuring the privacy and confidentiality of your personal information. Buderim Gastroenterology Centre must comply with the Privacy Act 1988 (Commonwealth) (“the Act”) and the Australian Privacy Principles (“APPs”) and any other applicable privacy laws that govern how private sector Health Service providers handle your personal information (inclusive of sensitive information and Health Information).

This Privacy Policy explains how we manage the personal information that we collect, use and disclose and how to contact us if you have any questions about the management of your personal information or would like to access the personal information we hold about you.

For Buderim Gastroenterology Centre to provide Health Services that include our range of health services that are requested by you, Buderim Gastroenterology Centre will need to collect and use your personal information in order to provide this service and support services that you use. If you provide inaccurate or incomplete personal information we may not be able to provide you with the Health Services you are requesting. The following definitions are used throughout the Privacy Policy.

 

Terms used in this privacy policy

Personal Information

Personal Information as defined by the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) is ‘information or an opinion, about an identified individual, or an individual who is reasonably identifiable. Whether true or not, and whether recorded in a material form or not’.

Common examples are an individual’s name, signature, address, telephone number, date of birth, medical records, bank account details, employment details and commentary or opinion about a person.

Sensitive Information

Sensitive information is racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, membership of a political association, religious beliefs or affiliations, philosophical beliefs, membership of a professional or trade association, membership of a trade union, sexual preferences or practices, criminal record that is also personal information or health information about an individual.

Health Information

‘Health Information’ is information or opinion about the health or disability (at any time) of an individual, an individual’s expressed wishes about future provision of Health Services to him or her or a Health Service provided or to be provided to an individual that is also personal information. It also includes other personal information collected to provide a Health Service (eg name, address) and information about donation of body parts, organs or body substances and genetic information.

Health Service

A ‘Health Service’ as defined by the Privacy Act ‘a Health Service includes any activity that involves: assessing, recording, maintaining or improving a person’s health; or diagnosing or treating a person’s illness or disability; or dispensing a prescription drug or medicinal preparation by a pharmacist’.

The Privacy Act applies to all private sector organisations that deliver these types of services, including all small Health Services that hold health information.

 

Sections

The following sections of the Privacy Policy will address:

• What kind of Personal Information we collect and
• How we collect your Personal Information.
• How we hold your Personal Information.
• Purposes for which we collect, use, hold, and disclose Personal Information.
• Access and Correction of Personal Information.
• Registering a complaint about Personal Information
• Anonymity and
• Transborder disclosure of Personal Information.
• Contact our Privacy

 

1.  What kind of Personal Information we collect and hold

Buderim Gastroenterology Centre will only collect the information necessary to deliver our Health Service. Buderim Gastroenterology Centre will only collect personal information about you by lawful and fair means and not in an unreasonably intrusive manner.

Buderim Gastroenterology Centre’s role as Health Service is related to providing clinical care and procedure diagnosis. For Buderim Gastroenterology Centre to provide this service we need to manage and hold personal information (including sensitive) and health information to facilitate the provision of these services.

The types of personal (including sensitive) information and health information we collect and hold may include but not limited to:

• Contact details such as name, address, date of births, provider number, email, phone, mobile and fax
• Personal Details such as date of birth, sex, primary language, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, nationality, race,
• Health information such as medical record, results or
• Follow-up calls/emails, complaints, feedback and enquiries.

Job Applicants

Buderim Gastroenterology Centre may collect personal information from job applicants for the primary purpose of interviewing, evaluating or employing job applicants. Personal Information may include but not limited to Resumes, Superannuation, banking and educational details. Buderim Gastroenterology Centre may also store information provided by job applicants who were unsuccessful for the purposes of future recruitment.

Our Website and Personal Information Cookies

The Buderim Gastroenterology Centre Web site uses cookies to help you personalise your online experience. A cookie is a text file that is placed on your hard disk by a Web page server. Cookies cannot be used to run programs or deliver viruses to your computer. Cookies are uniquely assigned to you, and can only be read by a web server in the domain that issued the cookie to you.

One of the primary purposes of cookies is to provide a convenience feature to save you time. The purpose of a cookie is to tell the Web server that you have returned to a specific page. For example, if you personalize Buderim Gastroenterology Centre pages, or register with Buderim Gastroenterology Centre site or services, a cookie helps Buderim Gastroenterology Centre to recall your specific information on subsequent visits. This simplifies the process of recording your personal information, such as billing addresses, shipping addresses, and so on. When you return to the same Buderim Gastroenterology Centre Web site, the information you previously provided can be retrieved, so you can easily use the Buderim Gastroenterology Centre features that you customised.

You have the ability to accept or decline cookies. Most Web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. If you choose to decline cookies, you may not be able to fully experience the interactive features of the Buderim Gastroenterology Centre services or Web sites you visit.

Website Links

We may provide links to third party websites. We are not responsible for the content or privacy practices employed by third party websites that are linked from our website.

Website Statistics

Buderim Gastroenterology Centre keeps track of the websites and pages our customers visit within the Buderim Gastroenterology Centre domain, this is to determine what Buderim Gastroenterology Centre services are the most popular. This data is used to deliver customised content and advertising within Buderim Gastroenterology Centre domain to customers whose behavior indicates that they are interested in a particular subject area.

 

2. How we collect your Personal Information

Buderim Gastroenterology Centre have a number of methods available for collection of personal information including but not limited to, request forms, mail, email, feedback forms, phone calls, website forms, fax, secure messaging, and medical software.

We usually collect Personal Information directly from you or an authorised representative. We may also collect personal information from trusted third parties, or publically available resources for the purpose of taking reasonable steps to ensure our information is up to date, complete and relevant.

Personal information that is collected from a trusted third party is checked against our own internal records first that are used for the same purpose. We will notify the owner of the personal information where practically possible as to the third party we obtain the information from.

 

3. How we hold your Personal Information

Buderim Gastroenterology Centre will take reasonable steps to ensure that your personal information which we may collect, use or disclose is accurate, complete and up-to-date.

Buderim Gastroenterology Centre will take reasonable steps to make sure that personal information we collect from the above sources are protected and held in a secure environment. All personal information is safeguarded and stored on our secure servers or secured file storage areas.

Information security is one of the utmost important aspects of Buderim Gastroenterology Centre. Buderim Gastroenterology Centre takes every step possible to ensure confidentiality, integrity and security of the system and information.

Some of the security measures we use to protect against unauthorised access to our systems and data are: Software and Hardware Firewalls, Virus scanning tools, in transit data encryption, Training and security updates, Network monitoring and logging tools, Public and private key encryption, User access policies.

 

4. Purposes for which we collect, hold, use, and disclose personal information

Buderim Gastroenterology Centre only uses your personal information for:

• To assist in providing medical treatment and care
• To assist the treating doctors and allied health professionals in providing medical treatment and care to the patient at our facility
• To assist with any correspondence they have with us
• To assist with our internal administrative requirements
• To process private health fund claims or claims on government
• To conduct quality reviews and clinical audits
• To provide information to Medical Practitioners, Allied Health Professionals and other health care facilities who provide necessary follow-up treatments and ongoing care
• For benchmarking and clinical indicators reporting in a de-identified form
• To provide data in both an identified and de-identified form to State Government agencies in compliance with numerous legislative requirements
• To provide date in a de-identified form to the Private Hospital Data Bureau
• To maintain the various licenses and accreditation requirements necessary to operate the facility
• To manage our facility insurance requirements

 

5. Access and Correction of Personal Information

Buderim Gastroenterology Centre allows you to access and correct personal information it holds about you as required by law. If you have any enquiries about how Buderim Gastroenterology Centre handles your personal information, or would like to request access to or to correct that information, please contact our Privacy Officer. (see contact details below in Section 9)

 

6. Registering a complaint about Personal Information handling

If you have a complaint in relation to the collection and handling of your personal information, please contact our Privacy Officer via the details provided below in section 9. We will review all complaints received and the Privacy Officer will respond to the complainant.

 

7. Anonymity

Where practical, you may deal with us on an anonymous basis or by using a pseudonym. In some instances, because of the services we provide, if you do not provide us with your Personal Information we may not be able to provide you with the requested medical products or services.

 

8. Transborder disclosure of Personal Information

Buderim Gastroenterology Centre is unlikely to disclose your personal information relating to an individuals or entities outside of Australia. If the requirement arises, we will not send your Personal Information outside of Australia unless we obtain an agreement from you to protect your information in accordance with Australian Privacy Act.

 

9. Contact our Privacy Officer

Mail to: Privacy Officer, Buderim Gastroenterology Centre, PO BOX 5048, Maroochydore B.C. QLD, 4558, Australia or enquire@buderimgastro.com.au.