Victoria Cross ENT – Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

Victoria Cross ENT is committed to providing quality health care services for its patients.  A foundation to this commitment is the careful management of the personal information provided by you or derived from the information provided by you.The practice has a policy to protect your privacy through compliance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (‘the Privacy Act’) containing the 13 Australian Privacy Principles (APPs).  A copy of the APPs can be obtained from the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner website.

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
• Other health information about you, including:
  • notes of your symptoms or diagnosis and the treatment given to you
  • your specialist reports and test results
  • your appointment and billing details
  • your prescriptions and other pharmaceutical purchases
  • your dental records
  • your genetic information
  • your healthcare identifier
  • any other information about your race, sexuality or religion, when collected by a health service provider.

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 use of our website
• 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, and 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 IT 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
• if you have a My Health Record, to upload your personal information to, and download your personal information from, the My Health Record system
• information can also be disclosed through an electronic transfer of prescriptions service
• 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. How can you access and correct your personal information?

You have a right to seek access to, and correction of the personal information which we hold about you.  For details on how to access and correct your health record, please contact us. 

6. How do we hold your personal information?

Our staff are trained and required to respect and protect your privacy. We take reasonable steps to protect information held from misuse and loss and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. 

7. Overseas disclosure

The practice does not disclose your personal information to overseas recipients except under the following circumstances:

• with your permission, to any overseas practice or individual who assists us in providing services (such as you have come from overseas and had your health record transferred from overseas or have treatment continuing from an overseas provider)
• to anyone else to whom you authorise us to disclose it

8. Updates to this Policy

This policy will be amended from time to time to take account of new laws and technology, changes to our operations and other necessary developments. Any updated policy will be published on our website.

9. Privacy related enquiries

If you have any questions or concerns about privacy-related issues or of our data practices, please contact us at:

Victoria Cross ENT
Suite 403/53 Walker Street
North Sydney, NSW 2060
Phone: 02 7232 3168
Email: admin@victoriacrossent.com.au