Drs Alyssa Arnold, Ray Mariasoosai, Geoff Tyler, Ken Goon, Alexander Gordon, Emily Dunn and Newcastle Pulmonary Function Laboratory.

Privacy Protection and confidentiality of health information is essential for quality health care. We are committed to best practice in relation to the management of information we collect.

Newcastle Lung Group has developed a policy to protect patient privacy in compliance with privacy legislation.

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.
• How you may complain about a breach of the Australian Privacy Principles and how we will deal with such a complaint.
• Whether we are likely to disclose personal information to overseas recipients.

What kinds of personal information do we collect?

• Personal Details (Your name, address, date of birth, and contact details)
• Medicare number, DVA number and other government identifiers, any Insurance details if needed for insurance claims.  We do not use these for the purpose of identifying you in our practice.
• Your health information and other sensitive information (Medical history, notes made during the course of a medical consultation, prescriptions, appointment and billing details).
• Results and reports received from other health service providers.

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 may be face to face, via telephone discussion, paper registration form or an online form.
• From a person responsible for you.
• From third parties where the Privacy Act or other law allows it.

Why do we collect, hold, use and disclose personal information?

In general, we may collect, hold, use and disclose your personal information for the following purposes:

• To provide health services to you, including treating doctors, pathology services, radiology services and other services outside this practice.
• To communicate with you
• To comply with our legal obligations which may include mandatory notification of communicable diseases or pursuant to a subpoena
• To help us manage our accounts and administrative services (such as financial claims and payments).

How can you access and correct your personal information?

Subject to the exceptions set out in the Privacy Act, you may seek access to and correction of the personal information which we hold about you in accordance with our access policy.

We ask that you put your request to access your medical record in writing and our practice will respond within 30 days. If a fee is charged for providing access, you will be advised of the cost in advance.

We aim to ensure the information we hold about you is accurate, complete, up to date and relevant. To this end our staff may ask you to confirm that your personal details are correct when you attend a consultation. Please let us know if any of the information we hold about you is incorrect or not up to date.

How do we hold your personal information?

Our staff are trained to respect and protect your privacy.  We take reasonable steps to protect information held from misuse and loss, from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure – this includes

• All computers secured by passwords.
• Records are stored in a paperless form.
• All paper records with any identifying patient data are disposed of in a “secure” bin and destroyed by a shredding company.
• Records are backed up – 

1. A full nighttime back encrypted back up of data to an offsite server.
2. A daily encrypted back up to a portable hard drive taken off site 
3. Hourly incremental encrypted back ups of data to the portable hard drive throughout the day (we have 3 portable drives on rotation).

• All staff sign a confidentiality agreement.

Privacy related questions and complaints – contact us

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 us – we will normally respond within 30 days. 

 

Practice Manager

Newcastle Lung Group

Suite 2, Ground Floor

20 Smart Street

Charlestown 2290 Phone:  49408000

 

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/indiviuals/how-do-i-make-a-privacy-complaint

Overseas Transfer of Data

We will not transfer your personal information to an overseas recipient unless we have your consent, or we are required to do so by law.

Updates to this Policy

This Policy will be reviewed from time to time to take into account new laws and technology, changes to our operations and other necessary developments.