Macquarie Medical Centre (ACT) Pty Ltd Privacy Policy
1. Introduction
Macquarie Medical Centre (ACT) Pty Ltd (MMC) 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 the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (‘the Privacy Act’). Our policy is to inform you of:
- the kinds of information that we collect and hold, which, as a medical practice, is likely to be ‘health information’ for the purposes of the Privacy Act;
- 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;
- how you may complain about a breach of the Australian Privacy Principles and how we will deal with such a complaint;
- We are unlikely to disclose your personal information overseas.
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.
- Any other information about your race, sexuality or religion, when collected by a health service provider. Patient health and medical information (physical and mental) including emergency contact(s).
- 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 healthcare identifier
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 form
- 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 (See: https://myhealthrecord.gov.au/internet/mhr/publishing.nsf/content/home ), Medicare, your health insurer, 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
- Direct Marketing – If we do, each communication we send you will contain instructions permitting you to “opt-out” of receiving future marketing communications. If at any time you do not wish to receive any future communications or you wish to have your details deleted from our mailing lists, please contact us.
- 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 ITC 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
- 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 at no cost to you.
For details on how to access and correct your health record, please contact our practice as noted below under ‘Contact Details’.
We will normally respond to your request within 30 days.
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. This includes:
- The Macquarie Medical Centre’s data is securely stored in Australia and is not stored or transferred outside of Australia.
- When the Macquarie Medical Centre no longer needs personal information for any purpose for which the information may be used or disclosed under the Australian Privacy Principles, we take reasonable steps to destroy the information or ensure that it is de-identified, except if the information is part of a Commonwealth record or the Macquarie Medical Centre is required by law or a court or tribunal order to retain the personal information.
7. Privacy related questions and complaints
If you have any questions about privacy-related issues or wish to complain about a breach of the Australian Privacy Principles or the handling of your personal information by us, you may lodge your complaint in writing to (see below for details). We will normally respond to your request within 30 days.
If you are dissatisfied with our response, you may refer the matter to the OAIC:
Phone: 1300 363 992
Email: enquiries@oaic.gov.au
Fax: +61 2 9284 9666
Post: GPO Box 5218
Sydney NSW 2001
Website: https://www.oaic.gov.au/individuals/how-do-i-make-a-privacy-complaint
10. Updates to this Policy
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. Updates will be publicised on the practice’s website.
11. Privacy and websites
Cookies
We may use “cookies”, traffic management software and similar technologies to collect data. Most cookies will only collect de-identified personal information however some cookies do collect personal information. For example, if you click “Remember me” when you log in to a website, a cookie will store your username.
We may collect information about:
- your IP address;
- the device you use to access our websites or applications (for example, we may collect information about the operating system or the browser version and the type of computer or mobile device); and
- the date, time and length of your visit to a website.
If you do not want information to be collected using cookies or measurement software, your device and/or browser may enable you to delete or “turn off” cookies or some of the measurement software features. However, some or all parts of our website may not function correctly if such features are disabled.
12. Contact details for privacy related issues
Macquarie Medical Centre
PO Box 6052
O’Connor ACT 2602
Phone: 02 6109 7900
info@macquariemedical.com.au