Empower Obstetrics & Gynaecology Medical Practice Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

Empower Obstetrics & Gynaecology 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;
  • whether we are likely to disclose personal information to overseas recipients;

2. What kinds of personal information do we collect and hold?

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;
  • 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 prescriptions and other pharmaceutical purchases;
  • your dental records;
  • your genetic information;
  • your healthcare identifier;
  • any other information about your race, sexuality or religion, when collected by a health service provider.

3. How do we collect 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, electronic prescription services, 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;
  • 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;
  • if you have a My Health Record, to upload your personal information to, and download your personal information from, the My Health Record system;
  • information can also be disclosed through an electronic transfer of prescriptions service;
  • 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.

For details on how to access and correct your health record, please contact Empower Obstetrics & Gynaecology via email or Contact Us.

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:

  • holding your information on an encrypted database;
  • holding your information in secure cloud storage.

All our staff at Empower Obstetrics & Gynaecology sign confidentiality agreements.

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 Empower Obstetrics & Gynaecology.  

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:

8. Anonymity and pseudonyms

The Privacy Act provides that individuals must have the option of not identifying themselves, or of using a pseudonym, when dealing with our practice, except in certain circumstances, such as where it is impracticable for us to deal with you if you have not identified yourself.

9. Overseas disclosure

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

  • any practice or individual who assists us in providing services, such as where you have come from overseas and had your health record transferred from overseas or have treatment continuing from an overseas provider;
  • overseas transcription services;
  • overseas based cloud storage;
  • anyone else to whom you authorise us to disclose it.

10. Personal information for direct contact

Our staff may ask for your email address or mobile number when booking over the phone. Email addresses and mobile numbers are added to a mailing list for the purpose of sending reminders, collecting patient feedback and sending information regarding new services, staff and important updates or notices. You may unsubscribe from this mailing list at any time. Your email address is not disclosed to any third parties.

If you don’t wish for your email address to be recorded. Please advise the staff member and it will be removed from our records. However, you may miss out on important updates and information.

11. Protecting your online privacy

This website uses Google Analytics to help analyse how users use the site and uses “cookies” as a tool to do so.

A cookie is a small file, which asks permission to be placed on your computer’s hard drive. Once you agree, the file is added and the cookie helps analyse web traffic or lets you know when you visit a particular site. Cookies allow web applications to:

  • respond to you as an individual;
  • tailor its operations to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences.

The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website (including IP address) is transmitted to Google. This information is then used to evaluate visitors of the website. You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. This may prevent you from taking full advantage of the website. A cookie in no way gives access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us.

We use traffic log cookies to identify:

  • which pages are being used;
  • to analyse data about webpage traffic;
  • to improve our website in order to tailor it to customer needs.

We only use this information for statistical data purposes and then the data is removed from the system.

Empower Obstetrics & Gynaecology will never, and will not allow any third party, to use the statistical analytics tool to track or to collect any Personally Identifiable Information (PII) of visitors to the site. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. Neither we, nor Google, will link, or seek to link, an IP address with the identity of a computer user.

Empower Obstetrics & Gynaecology will not associate any data gathered from this site with any Personally Identifiable Information from any source.

12. Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to other websites of interest. Once you use these links to leave our site, we do not have any control over that other website. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information, which you provide whilst visiting such sites. External sites are not governed by this privacy policy. Always exercise caution and look at the privacy policy applicable to the website in question.

13. 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 this page, and you should check this page from time to time for any changes.

14. Contact details for privacy related issues

Our contact details for any privacy related issue is privacy@empowerog.com.au.

Review Date: 9 March 2023