COASTAL MEDICAL SERVICES PRIVACY POLICY

Coastal Medical Services is the home of Hole in the Heart Clinic, Lipoedema Surgical Solution, Metrocentre, Vein Doctors Group and Swollen Legs Clinic. These brands have their own individual websites that are covered by this privacy policy.

Introduction

To provide you with the highest standard of care, we are required to collect personal information from you. We value the need to safeguard this information in accordance with the principles laid down in 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;

What kinds of personal information do we collect?

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: your medical history
• 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 genetic information
• your healthcare identifier
• any other information about your race, sexuality or religion, when collected by a health service provider.
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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 might be via a face-to-face discussion, telephone conversation, patient portal, or another online or physical 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 system1, electronic prescription services, Medicare, your health insurer, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme

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
• to upload your personal information to, and download your personal information from, the My Health Record system
• to electronically transfer prescriptions
• 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.
• to send you direct marketing emails or text messages about related services or relevant education, advocacy and awareness programs. You may opt out of direct marketing at any time by emailing our practice as noted below under ‘Contact Details’.
• In our efforts to share expertise and knowledge, individual case studies are posted to the our websites and other forums, including lectures to other doctors, patients, specialists and discussion groups. Many of these case studies are completely de-identified, except where patients have provided express consent to be identified. If you would prefer to have your de-identified treatment excluded from case studies, please notify our team.
• If you have any questions regarding the information we collect from you and hold in your records, please do not hesitate to contact us.

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 our practice as noted below under ‘Contact Details’. We will normally respond to your request within 30 days.

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:

• Only using approved platforms, programs and software
• Holding your information in secure locations, with password protection
• Securing any physical documentation, records, and access to systems

• Training our staff sign in data security and having them sign confidentiality agreements
• Implementing document retention and destruction policies throughout our practice

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 (see below for details). 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:

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

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)
• anyone else to whom you authorise us to disclose it.

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 the practice’s website.

Privacy and websites

Our privacy policy can be accessed via our websites.

Material on our websites

The material on our websites are intended only to provide a summary and general overview on matters of interest. This website and the information contained within it is subject to continuous change and although we attempt to ensure the content is correct and current we do not guarantee its currency nor correctness due to delays, errors and omissions which may occur.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Coastal Medical Services takes no responsibility to you or anyone else for any loss or damage suffered as a result of or in connection with the use of this website or any of its content. This includes, but is not limited to, the transmission of any computer viruses and any subsequent constructive loss which may occur. We recommend that prior to downloading any files, photos or articles, an appropriate virus check should be conducted.

Coastal Medical Services provides links to other sites for your convenience, however, we take no responsibility as to the accuracy or currency of information on those sites. We do not endorse any information, goods or services referred to within the sites and our provision of links should not be taken to be an endorsement.

Coastal Medical Services authorises printing of content for personal use only and, all other use, copying or reproduction of this website or any part of it is prohibited (except to the extent permitted by law).

Collection of Information via our websites

Our internet service provider makes a record of each visit to the website. When you visit our website, the following list provides an example of the information that may be logged for statistical purposes only:

• Your server address
• Your top level domain name (for example .com, .gov, .au, etc)
• The date and time of your visit to the site
• The pages accessed and documents downloaded by you
• The previous site visited by you
• The type of browser used by you

Coastal Medical Services websites may use the Google AdWords remarketing service to advertise on third party websites (including Google) to previous visitors to our site. It could mean that we advertise to previous visitors who haven’t completed a task on our site, for example using the contact form to make an enquiry. This could be in the form of an advertisement on the Google search results page, or a site in the Google Display Network. Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on someone’s past visits to the Coastal Medical Services websites. Of course, any data collected will be used in accordance with our own privacy policy and Google’s privacy policy.

Contact details for privacy related issues

Practice Manager
Coastal Medical Services Pty Ltd

1800 483 467

info@coastalmedical.com.au

24 Hillcrest Pde, Miami Qld 4220