Privacy Policy

Who we are

We are Bayside Pelvic Health – ABN: 46 341 830 600. Our website address is: https://baysidepelvichealth.com.au

There are two parts to our Privacy Policy; the first relating to the clinical side of Bayside Pelvic Health as a physiotherapy practice and the second to the operation of baysidepelvichealth.com.au

Privacy and Bayside Pelvic Health

Introduction

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.

Why and when your consent is necessary

When you register as a patient of our practice, you provide consent for our physiotherapists and any practice 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.

Why do we collect, use, hold and share your 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 (eg. staff training).

What personal information do we collect?

The information we will collect about you includes your:

  • names, date of birth, addresses, contact details
  • medical information including medical history, medications, allergies, adverse events, immunisations, social history, family history and risk factors
  • Medicare number (if applicable) for identification and claiming purposes
  • healthcare identifiers
  • health fund details for identification and claiming purposes
Dealing with us anonymously

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.

How do we collect your personal information?

Our practice may collect your personal information in several different ways.

  • When you make your first appointment you will be required to provide your email address and phone number.
  • When you attend your first appointment our practice staff will collect your personal and demographic information via your registration.
  • During the course of providing medical services, we may collect further personal information.
  • We may also collect your personal information when you visit our website, send us an email or SMS, telephone us, make an online appointment or communicate with us using social media.
  • 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 general practitioners, specialists,
    • other allied health professionals, hospitals, community health services and pathology and diagnostic imaging services
    • your health fund, Medicare, or the Department of Veterans’ Affairs (as necessary).
When, why and with whom do we share 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 the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) and this policy
  • with other healthcare providers
  • when it is required or authorised by law (eg 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 (eg some diseases require mandatory notification)

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.

Our practice may use your personal information to improve the quality of the services we offer to our patients through research and analysis of our patient data.

How do we store and protect your personal information?

Your personal information will be managed confidentially at our practice in electronic format. Any paper records are digitised and securely destroyed. Our practice stores all personal information securely in protected information systems.

How can you access and correct your personal information at our practice?

You have the right to request access to, and correction of, your personal information. However, our practice may occasionally need to deny access to information in accordance with the exemptions contained in the Privacy Act.

Our practice acknowledges patients may request access to their health records. We require you to put this request in writing to privacy@baysidepelvichealth.com.au and our practice will respond within 30 days.

You may request access to your health records for the purposes of transferring to a physiotherapist at another practice. Our practice will retain the original record and provide the new physiotherapist with a copy. Our practice will obtain your express consent to transfer your personal information via email to the new physiotherapist. If this consent isn’t provided, or the new physiotherapist declines to receive the record electronically, a physical copy will be provided.

Our practice will take reasonable steps to correct your personal information where the information is not accurate or up to date. From time to time, we will ask you to verify that your personal information held by our practice is correct and current. You may also request that we correct or update your information, and you should make such requests in writing to privacy@baysidepelvichealth.com.au

How can you lodge a privacy-related complaint, and how will the complaint be handled at our practice?

We take complaints and concerns regarding privacy seriously. You should express any privacy concerns you may have in writing. We will then attempt to resolve it with you.

You may also contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC). Generally, the OAIC will require you to give them time to respond before they will investigate. For further information visit www.oaic.gov.au or call the OAIC on 1300 363 992.

Privacy and baysidepelvichealth.com.au

Website Visitors

Like most website operators, Bayside Pelvic Health collects non-personally-identifying information of the sort that web browsers and servers typically make available, such as the browser type, language preference, referring site, and the date and time of each visitor request. Bayside Pelvic Health’s purpose in collecting non-personally identifying information is to better understand how Bayside Pelvic Health’s visitors use its website. From time to time, Bayside Pelvic Health may release non-personally-identifying information in the aggregate, e.g., by publishing a report on trends in the usage of its website.

Bayside Pelvic Health also collects potentially personally-identifying information like Internet Protocol (IP) addresses for logged in users and for users leaving comments on our blogs. Bayside Pelvic Health only discloses logged in user and commenter IP addresses under the same circumstances that it uses and discloses personally-identifying information as described below, except that blog commenter IP addresses are visible and disclosed to the administrators of the blog where the comment was left.

Gathering of Personally-Identifying Information

Certain visitors to Bayside Pelvic Health’s websites choose to interact with Bayside Pelvic Health in ways that require Bayside Pelvic Health to gather personally-identifying information. The amount and type of information that Bayside Pelvic Health gathers depends on the nature of the interaction. For example, we ask visitors who comment on our blog to provide a username and email address.

Those who wish to make an appointment provide an email address and phone number. In each case, Bayside Pelvic Health collects such information only insofar as is necessary or appropriate to fulfil the purpose of the visitor’s interaction with Bayside Pelvic Health. Bayside Pelvic Health does not disclose personally-identifying information other than as described in this policy. And visitors can always refuse to supply personally-identifying information, with the caveat that it may prevent them from engaging in certain website-related activities.

Aggregated Statistics

Bayside Pelvic Health may collect statistics about the behaviour of visitors to its websites. For instance, Bayside Pelvic Health may monitor the most popular pages on the baysidepelvichealth.com.au site or use spam screened by the Akismet service to help identify spam. Bayside Pelvic Health may display this information publicly or provide it to others. However, Bayside Pelvic Health does not disclose personally-identifying information other than as described below.

Protection of Certain Personally-Identifying Information

Personally-Identifying information collected as part of making an appointment to see a Bayside Pelvic Health practitioner is treated as Personal Information and handled as described above in the general privacy policy.

Bayside Pelvic Health discloses other potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information obtained through baysidepelvichealth.com.au only to those of its employees, contractors and affiliated organisations that (i) need to know that information in order to process it on Bayside Pelvic Health’s behalf or to provide services available at baysidepelvichealth.com.au, and (ii) that have agreed not to disclose it to others. Some of those employees, contractors and affiliated organisations may be located outside of your home country; by using Bayside Pelvic Health’s websites, you consent to the transfer of such information to them.

Bayside Pelvic Health will not rent or sell potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information obtained through baysidepelvichealth.com.au to anyone. Other than to its employees, contractors and affiliated organisations, as described above, Bayside Pelvic Health discloses potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information obtained through baysidepelvichealth.com.au only in response to a subpoena, court order or other governmental request, or when Bayside Pelvic Health believes in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of Bayside Pelvic Health, third parties or the public at large.

If you have supplied your email address on baysidepelvichealth.com.au specifically to sign up to Bayside Pelvic Health news and information, Bayside Pelvic Health may occasionally send you an email to tell you about new features, solicit your feedback, or just keep you up to date with what’s going on with Bayside Pelvic Health and our products. We primarily use our blog to communicate this type of information, so we expect to keep this type of email to a minimum. If you send us a request (for example via a support email or via one of our feedback mechanisms), we reserve the right to publish it in order to help us clarify or respond to your request or to help us support other users. Bayside Pelvic Health takes all measures reasonably necessary to protect against the unauthorised access, use, alteration or destruction of potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information obtained through baysidepelvichealth.com.au

Cookies

A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. Bayside Pelvic Health uses cookies to help Bayside Pelvic Health identify and track visitors, their usage of Bayside Pelvic Health website, and their website access preferences. Bayside Pelvic Health visitors who do not wish to have cookies placed on their computers should set their browsers to refuse cookies before using Bayside Pelvic Health’s websites, with the drawback that certain features of Bayside Pelvic Health’s websites may not function properly without the aid of cookies.

Comments

Comments and other content submitted to Akismet anti-spam service are not saved on our servers unless they were marked as false positives, in which case we store them long enough to use them to improve the service to avoid future false positives

Privacy Policy review statement

This policy will be reviewed periodically and any amendments will be incorporated into the updated policy. We will make our privacy policy available upon request and will provide access to this policy via our website.