1. Privacy

This Privacy Policy is current from July 2024.

We are committed to protecting the privacy of patient information and to handling your personal information in a responsible manner in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), the Privacy Amendment (Enhancing Privacy Protection) Act 2012 (Cth), the Australian Privacy Principles and relevant State and Territory privacy legislation (referred to as privacy legislation).

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.

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.

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.

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2. Your Consent

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

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3. Collect, Use, Hold and Share of 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).

To protect your privacy, we will:

• only obtain health information necessary to provide our services to you;

• take all reasonable steps to keep your health information secure;

• give you access to the information we have about you in accordance with our obligations under privacy laws;

• not disclose your personal information to external parties except in accordance with this Privacy Policy, or with your consent, unless we are legally authorised or required to do so;

• provide you with an accessible complaints mechanism;

• provide procedures and training to staff to ensure that privacy processes are followed;

• take steps to ensure our external agents and contractors comply with privacy laws; and

• continue to review and improve our privacy practices.

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4. Personal Information

The information we will collect about you includes your:

• Names, date of birth, addresses, contact details

• Medical information including your clinical history such as medications, allergies, adverse events, immunisations, social history, family history and risk factors

• Results of any tests or procedures

• Information from your referring health professional and/or medical specialists that is necessary for the services we provide

• Information from other third parties (such as a family member, authorised representative or allied health professional)

Payment and administrative information, including Medicare number (where available) for identification and claiming purposes, healthcare identifiers, health.

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5. Being Anonymous

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 authorised by law to only deal with identified individuals.

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6. How We Collect Personal Information

We may collect your personal information in several different ways.

When you make your first appointment our staff will collect your personal and demographic information via your registration.

During the course of providing medical services, we may collect further personal information. Note: This practice participates in eHealth and information may also be collected through electronic transfer of prescriptions (eTP), My Health Record, e.g., via your Shared Health Summary, Event Summary.

We may also collect your personal information when you send us an email or SMS, telephone us, or make an online appointment.

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 your GP, specialists, allied health professionals, hospitals, community health services and pathology and diagnostic imaging services, your health fund, Medicare, or the Department of Veterans’ Affairs.

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7. Sharing 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 authorised 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 as this practice participates in eHealth 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.

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8. Store and Protect Your Personal Information

Your personal information may be stored at our practice in various forms, e.g. as paper records, electronic records, visual records and/or audio recordings.

Our practice stores all personal information securely e.g. electronic format, in protected information systems or in hard copy format in a secured environment, use of password protection, lockable secure data server cabinets, and confidentiality agreements for staff and contractors.

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9. Cookies

EMI’s website, online services, e-mail messages, and advertisements may use "cookies" and other similar technologies, such as web beacons, pixel or gif tags, and action tags. Those technologies collect information that assists EMI to improve products and services, advertising, customer communications and the customer experience.

For example, EMI may use information collected through cookies and similar technologies to recognize the user of EMI's websites and supplement our confidential profile for that user, determine a user's general location to tailor the website content to that user's location, track use of the websites, offer personalized web page content, information and advertisements, and otherwise facilitate and improve the website experience. You may choose to decline or disable cookies if your web browser permits, but doing so may affect your ability to access or use certain features of EMI's websites. Information about how Google uses cookies and how you can limit or disable certain kinds of cookies on your personal computer or mobile device is available here: www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/ and www.google.com/policies/technologies/ads/.

EMI may use web beacons, pixel or gif tags, and action tags to confirm that e-mail messages have been delivered and opened. You may opt-out of receiving e-mails in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

Information provided by cookies may be collected and processed by EMI or by its third party service providers, including Google and Facebook.

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