Privacy and Confidentiality Policy of Coomera Town Medical Centre
The purpose of this document is to explain to you how Coomera Town Medical Centre complies with its confidentiality and privacy obligations. This policy is readily available to all of Coomera Town Medical centre’s patients. We require you to read it carefully before consenting to provide your personal information.
This general practice collects information from you for the primary purpose of providing quality health care. We require you to provide us with your personal details and a full medical history so that we may properly assess, diagnose and treat illnesses and medical conditions, ensuring we are proactive in your health care. To enable ongoing care, and in keeping with the Privacy Act 1998 and Australian Privacy Principles, we wish to provide you with sufficient information on how your personal information may be used or disclosed and record your consent or restrictions to this consent.
Your personal information will only be used for purposes for which it was collected or as otherwise permitted by law, and we respect your right to determine how your information is used or disclosed.
This information we collect may be collected by a number of different methods and examples may include: medical test results, notes from consultations, Medicare details, data collected from observations and conversations with you, and details obtained from other health care providers (e.g. specialist correspondence).
By signing below, you (as a patient/parent/guardian) are consenting to the collection of your personal information, and that it may be used or disclosed by the practice for the following purposes:
Administrative purposes in the operation of our general practice.
Billing purposes, including compliance with Medicare requirements.
Follow-up reminder/recall notices for treatment and preventative healthcare, frequently issued by SMS.
Disclosure to others involved in your health care, including treating doctors and specialists outside this medical practice. This may occur through referral to other doctors, or for medical tests in the reports or results returned to us following the referrals.
Accreditation and quality assurance activities to improve individual and community health care and practice management.
For legal related disclosure as required by a court of law.
For the purposes of research only where de-identified information is used.
To allow medical students and staff to participate in medical training/teaching using only de-identified information.
To comply with any legislative or regulatory requirements, e.g. notifiable diseases.
For use when seeking treatment by other doctors in this practice.
At all times we are required to ensure your details are treated with the utmost confidentiality. Your records are very important and we will take all steps necessary to ensure they remain confidential.
Other than as described in this Policy or permitted under the Privacy Act 1998 and Australian Privacy Principles, Coomera Town Medical centre uses its reasonable endeavours to ensure that identifying health information is not disclosed to any person. We keep health information for a minimum of 7 years from the date of last entry in the patient record (unless the patient was a child in which case the record must be kept until the patient attains or would have attained 25 years of age). Our electronic files are protected on several levels using very secured passwords, and the computer backup tapes are stored offsite. We ensure all our employees and contractors observe obligations of confidentiality in the course of their employment/contract. All independent contractors also require to sign a confidentiality contract to access any information.
If you wish to access your information, correct any information or have any complaint about a breach of privacy, please contact the
Privacy and Confidentiality Officer at Coomera Town Medical Centre.