Practice Policies
Privacy
Our practice is committed to best practice in relation to the management of information we collect. This practice has developed a policy
to protect patient privacy in compliance with privacy legislation. By accepting your consultation appointment with us, you give consent
for us to collect and use your information as outlined below.
Our policy is to inform you of the kinds of personal information that we collect and hold, how we collect and hold personal information,
the purposes for which we collect, hold, use and disclose personal information, how you may access your personal information and seek
the correction of that information.
The type of information we may collect and hold includes personal information about:
Your name, address, date of birth, email and contact details
Medicare number
Your health information and other sensitive information.
We will generally collect personal information:
From you directly when you provide your details to us
From a person responsible for you
From third parties where the Privacy Act or other law allows it.
In general, we may collect, hold, use and disclose your personal information for the following purposes:
To provide health services to you
To communicate with you
To comply with our legal obligations which may include mandatory notification of communicable diseases
To help us manage our accounts and administrative services.
Subject to the exceptions set out in the Privacy Act, you may seek access to and correction of the personal information that we hold
about you in accordance with our access policy. If a fee is charged for providing access, you will be advised of the cost in advance.
This policy will be reviewed from time to time to take account of new laws and technology, changes to our operations and other
necessary developments. Please don't hesitate to speak to us if you have any questions regarding this policy.
Communication
Please phone our practice on 0434 219 246 for all clinical matters. During consulting and busy periods we may request that you leave a message; we endeavour to respond to messages within one business day. If you require urgent medical attention, please phone 000 or attend your nearest emergency hospital, and they will liaise with us regarding your care.
We use automatically generated SMS messages to send appointment confirmation reminders, to which a “Y” or “N” response can be received. Please note that any other incoming SMS messages will not be received by us.
Please note that our email service is not encrypted, and therefore we cannot guarantee the security of our email communications. There is a risk that emails and/or attachments could be read by someone other than the intended recipient. For this reason, we discourage health providers from sending emails to us with personal information about patients, and we discourage patients from sending emails to us with their own personal information. Where possible, we will use encryption when email communication is required. In certain circumstances, we may agree to email you with a response to a query and/or with information or documentation that you have requested which does include your health information, provided that you have confirmed that you have considered and accepted the risks associated with email communications.
For communication with health professionals, we prefer to receive correspondence via Argus secure messaging. Please avoid faxing or posting us correspondence if you are able to send via secure messaging.