Quality Care and Your Privacy

Our goal is to help our patients to live long, healthy and rewarding lives.

We believe that this is best achieved by working together as a team which includes patient, doctors and clinical staff and through ensuring a holistic approach to health and wellbeing.

We take pride in having developed an Medical Centre which is equipped with state-of-the-art equipment and safety systems.

Our commitment to providing quality clinical care has been rewarded by the achievement of the highest level of practice accreditation with GPA Australia

GPA sets exacting standards in areas including staff training, confidentiality, emergency equipment, sterilization, infection control and data security.

We are proud to have achieved and maintained our accreditation. Our patients can be confident that we will continue to provide the highest possible standard of care.

All of the Doctors at the Mount Beauty Medical Centre have specialist qualifications in General Practice. We undertake regular training and up-skilling in addition to fulfilling the regular training requirements of ACRRM and RACOG.

Informed PatientDecisions

Your GP will explain the purpose, importance, benefits and risks of investigations, referrals and treatments allowing you to make an informed decision about your health care.

Mount Beauty Medical Centre Practice Privacy Information

Introduction

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, 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.

This Privacy Policy is current from 1st January 2015. From time to time we may make changes to your 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.

Collection and use of your information

We collect information that is necessary and relevant to provide you with medical care and treatment, and manage our medical practice. This information may include your name, address, date of birth, gender, health information, family history, credit card and direct debit details and contact details. This information may be stored on our computer medical records system and/or in hand written medical records.

Wherever practicable we will only collect information from you personally. However, we may also need to collect information from other sources such as treating specialist, radiologists, pathologist, hospitals and other health care providers.

We collect information in various ways, such as over the phone or in writing, in person in our Medical Centre or over the internet if you transact with us online. This information may be collected by medical and non-medical staff.

In emergency situations we may also need to collect information from your relatives or friends. We may be required by law to retain medical records for certain periods of time depending on your age at the time we provide services.

Disclosure of your information

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.

There are 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, hospital, or debt collection agents. We may also from time to time provide statistical data to third parties or research purposes.

We may disclose information about you to outside contractors to carry out activities on our behalf, such as an IT service provider, solicitor or debt collection agent. We impose security and confidentiality requirements on how they handle your personal information. Outside contractors are required not to use information about you for any purpose except for those activities we have asked them to perform.

Using health information for quality improvement and research

Your information held by the practice may be used in research projects to improve healthcare in the community, however this information will not include data that can identify you.

Data Quality and Security of your information

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 youto confirm that your contact details are correct when you attend a consultation. We requests 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 passwords and varying access levels on databases to limit access and protect electronic information from unauthorized interference, access, modification and disclosure

Electronic Mail / SMS

Our Practice sends and receives letters and reports to and from our clinical software to other providers through the use of NEHTA approved secure messaging software. By adhering to NEHTA approved software thepractice ensures that messages are encrypted with an appropriate PKI certificate and remain so for the entire transmission process. This practice does not support or allow the use of insecure, electronic methods of transmission for correspondence containing identifiable clinical information including, but not limited to:

- General email

- Email secured with a non NEHTA approved certificate

- Electronic faxing

- Unsecured web based forms

Mount Beauty Medical Centre uses secure messaging delivery via Medical Objects, Healthlink, All talk and HIC online using practice and individually encrypted certificates.

Practice Email

Mount Beauty Medical Centre currently use Medical Objects, Healthlink and All talk to transfer medical information electronically. Where possible we prefer to receive correspondence in any of these formats.

We discourage all patients to use general email to send personal information to the practice. 0On our outgoing email messages we display a notice that informs the receiver that sending emails that are not encoded may be illegally accessed by third parties. We also have the SMD information on our webpage for patient information.

Practice SMS

The Medical Centre uses SMS messaging to remind patients of their upcoming appointments or to contact the practice for results and recalls. The doctor may organize with you to receive normal pathology results via SMS directly from your medical file. We rely on patients responding to the text or contacting the practice to follow up on any message received. Please let us know if your mobile phone number changes.

Correction

If you believe that the information we have about you is not accurate, complete or up-to-date. We ask that you contact us in writing(see details below).

Access

You are entitled to request access to your medical record. We request that you put your request in writing and we will respond to it within a reasonable time.

There may be a fee for the administrative costs of retrieving and providing you with copies of your medical records.

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.

Anonymity

Under privacy legislation, you can choose to remain anonymous if it is lawful and practicable to do so. In a medical context it could be dangerous for you to remain anonymous and it is not possible to claim Medicare and health insurance rebates without giving some identifying information.

Complaints

If you have a complaint about the privacy of your personal information, we request that you contact us in writing. Upon receipt of a complaint we will consider the details and attempt to resolve it in accordance with our complaints handling procedures.

If you are dissatisfied with our handling of a complaint or the outcome you may make an application to the Australian Information Commissioner or the Privacy Commissioner in your State or Territory.

Overseas Transfer of Data

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

Contact

Please direct any queries, complaints, requests for access to medical records to the Practice Manager, Mount Beauty Medical Centre.

Vision statement

Our practice aims to provide a high quality, personalised, and comprehensive primary medical care, with continuity of care throughout life phases.

Mission statement

The doctors will provide information to enable patients to make fully informed decisions regarding their medical treatment. Patient autonomy is both respected and encouraged.

All people will be offered high quality health care, regardless of age, gender, marital status, sexual preference, disability, ethnicity, political or religious beliefs, and social or economic status. Individual differences and beliefs are respected.

The receptionist, being the first point of contact for patients telephoning or coming to the practice, plays a critical role in determining the quality of care delivered