Classic Way Family Practice Privacy Policy

Current as of: 27 January 2025

Introduction

This privacy policy is to provide information to you, our patient, on how your personal information (which includes your health information) is collected and used within our practice, and the circumstances in which we may share it with third parties.

We are committed to protecting the privacy of patient information and to handling your personal information in a responsible manner in accordance with the Australian Privacy Principles. All information collected by this practice is deemed to be private and confidential.

This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, and disclose your personal information, how you may access that information, and how you may seek the correction of any information. It also explains how you may make a complaint about a breach of privacy legislation.

Why and When Your Consent is Necessary

When you register as a patient of our practice, you provide consent for our GPs and practice staff to access and use your personal information so they can provide you with the best possible healthcare. If we need to use your information for anything else, we will seek additional consent from you to do this.

Why Do We Collect, Use, Hold, and Share Your Personal Information?

Our practice will need to collect your personal information to provide healthcare services to you. Our main purpose for collecting, using, holding, and sharing your personal information is to manage your health. We also use it for directly related business activities, such as financial claims and payments, practice audits and accreditation, and business processes (e.g., staff training).

What Personal Information Do We Collect?

The information we will collect about you includes your:

Names, date of birth, addresses, contact details
Medical information including medical history, medications, allergies, adverse events, immunizations, social history, family history, and risk factors
Medicare number (where available) for identification and claiming purposes
Healthcare identifiers
Health fund details

Dealing with Us Anonymously

You have the right to deal with us anonymously or under a pseudonym unless it is impracticable for us to do so or unless we are required or authorized by law to only deal with identified individuals.

How Do We Collect Your Personal Information?

Our practice may collect your personal information in several different ways:

When you make your first appointment, our practice staff will collect your personal and demographic information via your registration.
During the course of providing medical services, we may collect further personal information. Information can also be collected through Electronic Transfer of Prescriptions (eTP), MyHealth Record/PCEHR system e.g., via Shared Health Summary, Event Summary.
We may also collect your personal information when you visit our website, send us an email or SMS, or telephone us.
In some circumstances, personal information may also be collected from other sources. Often this is because it is not practical or reasonable to collect it from you directly. This may include information from:
- Your guardian or responsible person
- Other involved healthcare providers, such as specialists, allied health professionals, hospitals, community health services, and pathology and diagnostic imaging services
- Your health fund, Medicare, or the Department of Veteran’s Affairs (as necessary)

When, Why, and With Whom Do We Share Your Personal Information?

We sometimes share your personal information:

With third parties who work with our practice for business purposes, such as accreditation agencies or information technology providers – these third parties are required to comply with APPs and this policy
With other healthcare providers
When it is required or authorized by law (e.g., court subpoenas)
When it is necessary to lessen or prevent a serious threat to a patient’s life, health or safety or public health or safety, or it is impractical to obtain the patient’s consent
To assist in locating a missing person
To establish, exercise, or defend an equitable claim
For the purpose of confidential dispute resolution process
When there is a statutory requirement to share certain personal information (e.g., some diseases require mandatory notification)
During the course of providing medical services, through eTP, My Health Record (e.g., via Shared Health Summary, Event Summary)

Only people who need to access your information will be able to do so. Other than in the course of providing medical services or as otherwise described in this policy, our practice will not share personal information with any third party without your consent.

We will not share your personal information with anyone outside Australia (unless under exceptional circumstances that are permitted by law) without your consent.

Our practice will not use your personal information for marketing any of our goods or services directly to you without your express consent. If you do consent, you may opt out of direct marketing at any time by notifying our practice in writing.

Our practice may use your personal information to improve the quality of the services we offer to our patients through research and analysis of our patient data.

We will treat your personal information as strictly private and confidential. We will only use or disclose it for purposes directly related to your care and treatment, or in ways that you would reasonably expect that we may use it for your ongoing care and treatment. For example, the disclosure of blood test results to your specialist or requests for X-rays.

We use your personal information to communicate with you via telephone, SMS, e-mail, mail, or by other means necessary to remind you about important health checks, to advise you of receipt of communication, results, or other health information that your doctor would like communicated.

There are specific and regulated circumstances where we may be permitted or required by law to disclose your personal information to third parties. For example, to Medicare, Police, insurers, solicitors, government regulatory bodies, tribunals, courts of law, hospitals, or debt collection agents.

We may also from time to time provide statistical data to third parties for research purposes.

We may engage contractors to carry out activities on our behalf, such as an IT service provider, solicitor, or debt collection agent. In the course of that work, they may see some of your information. We impose security and confidentiality requirements on how they handle your personal information. Outside contractors are required not to use information from our practice for any purpose except for those activities we have asked them to perform.

Secondary Use of De-Identified Data

This Privacy Policy is current from 27 January 2025. From time to time we may make changes to our policy, processes and systems in relation to how we handle your personal information. We will update this Privacy Policy to reflect any changes. Those changes will be available on our website and in the practice. The full copy of the Privacy Policy is available on our practice website: www.classicwayfamilypractice.com.au/

We may provide de-identified data to other organizations to improve population health outcomes as allowable under the privacy legislation. The information is secure, patients cannot be identified, and the information is stored within Australia. You can let our reception staff know if you do not want your de-identified information included.

De-identified data cannot be linked back to individual patients.
We use it for:
- Quality Improvement activities at the practice
- Accreditation
- Students and staff to participate in medical training/teaching
- Gold Coast Primary Health Network to inform local health needs and services

Where identified patient data may be used for these allowable secondary uses, your express consent will be obtained and documented.

How Do We Store and Protect Your Personal Information?

Your personal information may be stored at our practice in various forms.

We will take reasonable steps to ensure that your personal information is accurate, complete, up to date, and relevant. For this purpose, our staff may ask you to confirm that your contact details are correct when you attend a consultation. We request that you let us know if any of the information we hold about you is incorrect or out of date. Personal information that we hold is protected by:

Securing our premises
Placing extensive security measures across our computer network
Creating confidentiality agreements with staff and contractors
Placing passwords and varying access levels on databases to limit access and protect electronic information from unauthorized interference, access, modification, and disclosure
Providing locked cabinets and rooms for the storage of physical records

Our practice stores all personal information securely.

How can you access and correct your personal information at our practice?

You have the right to access and correct your personal information. Or practice acknowledges patients may request access to their medical records. We require you to put this request in writing on our Practice Request Form and our practice will respond within a reasonable time and will provide a copy of your record within 30 days.

There may be a fee for the administrative costs of retrieving and providing you with copies of your medical records which are of a significant size. We may deny access to your medical records in certain circumstances permitted by law, for example, if disclosure may cause a serious threat to your health or safety. We will always tell you why access is denied and the options you have to respond to our decision.

Our practice will take reasonable steps to correct your personal information where the information is not accurate or up to date. From time to time, we will ask you to verify that your personal information held by our practice is correct and current.

You may also request that we correct or update your information, and you should make such requests when seeing your doctor, via reception and/or in writing.

How can you lodge a privacy-related complaint, and how will the complaint be handled at our practice?

We take complaints and concerns regarding privacy seriously. You should express any privacy concerns you may have in writing. In our endeavour to provide quality medical care to you and your family, we would welcome both positive and negative comments so that we may improve our services to you.

Periodically we may ask you to complete a questionnaire. These are completely anonymous and confidential. We take complaints and concerns regarding privacy seriously. You should express any privacy concerns you may have in writing and can do so by:

Email: admin@classicwayfamilypractice.com.au

Post: 2/6 Classic Way Family Practice, Burleigh Waters QLD 4220.

Phone: (07) 5568 0600

We will then attempt to resolve it in accordance with our resolution procedure. If you are unhappy with any aspect of the care or service you receive from this practice, please speak to one of our doctors, the practice manager or the reception staff, and we will endeavour to address the problem. If you still have concerns, please submit them in writing to the Practice Manager. You will receive a response within 30 days.

You may, however, wish to take your complaint to an outside organisation. The body to contact is:

The Office of the Health Ombudsman

PO Box 13281 | George Street Brisbane Qld 4003

www.oho.qld.gov.au | info@oho.qld.gov.au

Phone 133OHO 133646 | Fax 07 3319 6350

You may also contact the OAIC. Generally, the OAIC will require you to give them time to respond before they will investigate. For further information visit www.oaic.gov.au or call the OAIC on 1300 363 992.