Privacy Policy

Arkaba Medical Centre complies with the Australian Privacy Principles, and information regarding our Privacy Policy is outlined below.

Collection
It is necessary for us to collect personal information from patients and sometimes others associated with their health care in order to attend to their health needs and for associated administrative purposes.

Sensitive Information
Health information is ‘sensitive information’ for the purposes of privacy legislation. This means that generally patients’ consent will be sought to collect health information that is necessary to make an accurate medical diagnosis, prescribe appropriate treatment and to be proactive in patient health care.

Use and Disclosure
A patient’s personal health information is used or disclosed for purposes directly related to their health care and in ways that are consistent with a patient’s expectations. In the interests of the highest quality and continuity of health care this may include sharing information with other health care providers who comprise a patient’s medical team from time to time. In addition there are circumstances when information has to be disclosed without patient consent, such as:

* Emergency situations.
* By law, doctors are required to disclose information for public interest reasons, e.g. mandatory reporting of some communicable diseases.
* It may be necessary to disclose information about a patient to fulfill a medical indemnity insurance obligation.
* Provision of information to Medicare or private health funds, if relevant, for billing and medical rebate purposes.

In general a patient’s health information will not be used for any other purposes without their consent. There are some necessary purposes of collection for which information will be used beyond providing health care, such as professional accreditation, quality assessments, clinical auditing, billing and so forth.

​Data Quality
All patient information held by this practice relevant to the functions of providing health care will be maintained in a form that is accurate, complete and up to date.

Data Security
The storage, use and, where necessary, transfer of personal health information will be undertaken in a secure manner that protects patient privacy. It is necessary for medical practices to keep information after a patient’s last attendance for as long as is required by law or is prudent having regard to administrative requirements.

Openness
This practice has made this and other material available to patients to inform them of our policies on management of personal information. On request this practice will let patients know, generally, what sort of personal information we hold, for what purposes, and how we collect, hold, use and disclose that information.

Access and Correction
Patients may request access to their personal health information held by this practice. Where necessary, patients will be given the opportunity to amend any personal information held that is incorrect.

There are some circumstances in which access is restricted, and in these cases reasons for denying access will be explained.

A charge may be payable where the practice incurs costs in providing access.

This practice acknowledges the right of children to privacy of their health information. Based on the professional judgement of the doctor and consistent with the law, it might at times be necessary to restrict access to personal health information by parents or guardians.

Upon request a patient’s health information held by this practice will be made available to another health service provider.

Identifiers
These are the numbers, letters or symbols that are used to identify patients with or without the use of a name (e.g. Medicare numbers). We will limit the use of identifiers assigned to patients by Commonwealth Government agencies to those uses necessary to fulfill our obligations to those agencies.

This Website
We are permitted by Wix to use the graphics and symbols. We are not permitted to use the graphics for purposes beyond this website.

You are not permitted to use or download any images of staff and doctors present on this website.