Privacy

Suzanne Long T/AS baby.physio (ABN 71 250 471 152) is committed to handling personal information about you, including health information about you, in accordance with the requirements of the Commonwealth Privacy Act 1988 and Privacy Amendment Act 2012.

This policy explains:

• what kind of information we collect and hold about you;
• how and why we collect it;
• what we do with that information and who we share it with (and when);
• your right to seek access to, and if required correction of, the records we hold about you;
• your right to make a privacy complaint, to us and others; and
• whether we are likely to disclose information about you to overseas recipients.

What kind of personal information do we collect about you?

As a client of baby.physio, we may collect and hold:

• your name, address, date of birth, email and contact details;
• information about your family or relatives;
• information about other health professionals involved in your care;
• government identifiers, e.g., Medicare number, NDIS number;
• other health information about you such as a record of your symptoms, your relevant medical history, the diagnosis made and the treatment we give you;
• specialist reports;
• test results;
• your appointment and billing details;
• your prescriptions;
• your healthcare identifier;
• your help fund details; and
• other information about you collected for the purposes of providing care to you.

How do we collect and hold your personal information?

We will generally collect personal information about you:

• directly from you when you give us your details (eg, face-to-face, over the phone, via an online form or booking);
• from a person responsible for you;

• from a third party where we are permitted by law to do that, e.g., from other health care professionals involved in your care, from your health insurer, and/or from the My Health Record system.

Why do we collect and use information about you?

Personal information is collected about you in order to provide physiotherapy services to you and to communicate with you and others involved in your care in relation to those services.

In addition, we may use your information for other purposes, including:

• to help us manage our accounts and administrative services, including billing, arrangements with health funds, pursuing unpaid accounts, management of our IT systems; and

• to conduct accreditation, quality assurance or internal audits.

 When and why might we share information about you with others?

We may disclose information about you to others outside of our practice as permitted or required under law. This will include situations where we disclose information about you in order:

• to comply with our legal obligations, e.g., mandatory reporting under legislation, responding to a court order or subpoena;

• to consult with other health professionals involved in your healthcare;

• to get test results from diagnostic and pathology services;

• to claim on insurance;

• to communicate with your health fund, with government and other regulatory bodies such as Medicare;

• to help us manage our accounts and administrative services, e.g., billing or debt recovery, arrangements with health funds, pursuing unpaid accounts;

• to lessen or prevent a serious threat to a patient’s life, health or safety or a serious threat to public health or safety;

• to help in locating a missing person;

• to establish, exercise or defend an equitable claim through the My Health Record;

• to prepare the defence of anticipated or existing legal proceedings; and/or

• to discharge notification obligations to liability insurers.

 

Your right to seek access to and to seek correction of the information we hold about you

You have the right to seek access to and correction of the personal information we hold about you. To make the request, you should contact Suzanne Long via:

email: suzanne@baby.physio 
phone: +61 428 013 585

Suzanne Long will normally respond to your request within 30 days.

If you think that the information we hold about you is not correct, let us know in writing. Reasonable steps will be taken to correct your personal information where the information is not accurate or up-to-date. From time to time, we may also ask you to verify that the information we hold about you is correct and current. And please notify us if and when your contact details change.

Security: how we hold your personal information

Reasonable steps are taken to protect the information we hold about you. These are designed to prevent unauthorised access, modification or disclosure and to prevent misuse and loss. This includes:

• holding information in lockable storage;
• holding information on an encrypted database;
• holding information in secure cloud storage;
• access to information restricted on a ‘need to know’ basis; and
• strong password protection when accessing the information on a computer, including two-factor authentication where possible.

 

Your right to receive treatment from us anonymously (or by using a pseudonym)

Where it is lawful and practicable for us to do so, you can be treated anonymously or through use of a pseudonym (a name other than yours).

Disclosing information about you overseas

We may disclose your personal information to the following overseas recipients:

• any health professional who helps us to provide our physiotherapy services to you, e.g., health professionals who treated you when you were overseas, or anyone else you authorise us to contact; and/or
• overseas cloud-based storage.

 

If you have a privacy-related concern about us

If you have concerns about the way we’ve handled your privacy, you should contact baby.physio in writing. A response will be provided within 30 days. If you are not satisfied with our response, you can refer your complaint to the Office of the Australian Information Commission via:

phone: 1300 363 992
email: enquiries@oaic.gov.au
postal address: GPO Box 5218 Sydney New South Wales 2001
website: oaic.gov.au/privacy/privacy-complaints

Updating this policy

We will update this policy from time to time, to reflect any changes in our information-handling practices or the law or both. Any updates to this privacy policy will be made available on our website baby.physio/privacy.

How to contact us

To contact us about any privacy related issues, please contact Suzanne Long via:

email: suzanne@baby.physio
phone: 0447 107 486