Last reviewed 30th June 2025
This information aims to explain clearly how personal information about you and your health is recorded and man-aged in this practice. Your practitioner will be happy to discuss this with you.
Your Personal Health Information and Health Record
Your practitioner needs information about your past and present health in order to provide you with high quality care. This practice will make sure that you are able to discuss your health with your doctor in private.
Information is called “personal health information” or a “patient health rec-ord” if it concerns your health, medical history or past/future medical care and if someone reading it would be able to identify you.
This practice follows the “Code of Practice for the Management of Health In-formation in Medical Practices” devel-oped by the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners. This means that your personal health information is kept private and secure. The approach used in this Code is consistent with the provisions of Federal and State Privacy Legislation. The practice has a written policy on personal health information – this policy is available to all patients for inspection.
Your Medical Records
Your practitioner will do his/her best to make sure that your medical records:
Are accurate, comprehensive, well or-ganised and legible;
Are up to date;
Have enough information to allow another doctor to care for you;
Do not contain offensive or irrelevant comments about you;
Contain a summary of your care; and
Can be used to remind you to return for follow up, check-ups and reviews.
Your practitioner will only collect in-formation that is relevant to your medi-cal care. If you are uncertain as to why information is being requested, please ask your practitioner.
What personal information is collected?
The information we will collect about you includes your:
• names, date of birth, addresses, contact details
• medical information including medi-cal history, medicines, allergies, and adverse reactions, immunisations, social history, family history and risk factors
• Medicare number (where available) for identification and claiming pur-poses
• healthcare identifier numbers
• health fund details.
Why do we collect, use, store, and share your personal in-formation?
The practice collects, uses, stores, and shares your personal information pri-marily to manage your health safely and effectively. This includes providing healthcare services, managing medical records, and ensuring accurate billing and payments. Additionally, we may utilise your information for internal quality and safety improvement pro-cesses such as practice audits, accredi-tation purposes, and staff training to maintain high-quality service standards.
How is personal information collected?
The practice may collect your personal information in several different ways:
When you make your first appointment, the practice team will collect your per-sonal and demographic information via your registration.
We may also collect your personal in-formation when you visit our website, send us an email or SMS, telephone us or make an online appointment.
In some circumstances, personal infor-mation may also be collected from oth-er sources, including:
• Your guardian or responsible person.
• Other involved healthcare providers, such as specialists, allied health professionals, hospitals, community health services, and pathology and diagnostic imaging services.
• Your health fund, Medicare, or the Department of Veterans’ Affairs (if relevant).
• While providing medical ser-vices, further personal information may be collected via:
o electronic prescribing
o My Health Record
o online appointments.
Photos and medical images: These can be taken using personal devices for medical purposes.
The practice does NOT record any consultations including Telehealth or Audio Visual consultations.
Practitioners' Notes
Practitioners' notes forever remain the intellectual property of the doctor who recorded them. They may contain some of your health information however, ultimately the decision to release prac-titioners notes to other parties, health practitioners and government bodies, unless subpoenaed by a court with the relevant jurisdiction, is a matter for individual practitioner to decide. For example, you may request a copy of your pathology results, which you will be provided, however, you may not be provided the doctors written notes on the results in question at the discretion of the doctor.
Providing Your Information to Other Practitioners
The practitioners in this practice re-spect your right to decide how your personal health information is used or disclosed (e.g. to other doctors and specialists). In all but exceptional circumstances, personal information that identifies you will be sent to other people outside this practice only with your consent. Gaining your consent is the guiding principle
It is important that other people involved in your care, such as other doc-tors and specialists, are informed of relevant parts of your medical history so that they can best care for you. If your practitioner needs to engage with a practitioner outside of this practice, after discussion with you, your practi-tioner will write a letter to the other practitioner, which will either be sent electronically, posted or given to you to take to them. If you have any concerns about this, please discuss them with your practitioner.
In most group practices it is customary for all practitioners in the practice to have access to all the medical records. If you have any concerns about other practitioners at this practice being able to see your records, discuss your con-cerns with your practitioner.
Providing Your Information to Others
Your practitioner will not disclose your personal health information to a third party unless:
You have consented to the disclosure; or
This disclosure is necessary because you are at risk of harm without treat-ment and you are unable to give consent – for example you might be un-conscious after an accident; or
Your doctor is legally obliged to disclose the information (e.g. notification of cer-tain infectious diseases or suspected child abuse, or a subpoena or court order) ; or
The information is necessary to obtain Medicare payments, Department of Veterans Affairs payments or other health insurance rebates; or
The information is necessary to obtain your eligibility for Medicare payments, Department of Veterans Affairs pay-ments or other health insurance pay-ments; or
This disclosure is necessary for the doc-tors in the practice to carry out a re-view of their practice for the purpose of improving the quality of care provid-ed and the activity has been approved under Commonwealth or State legislation or by a Medical College. This pro-vides safeguards to protect the confi-dentiality of the information provided; or
There is an overriding public interest in the release of the information.
In any of the above cases only infor-mation that is necessary to achieve the objective will be provided.
How are document automation technologies used?
Document automation is where systems use existing data to generate electronic documents relating to medical conditions and healthcare.
The practice uses document automa-tion technologies to create documents such as referrals, which are sent to other healthcare providers. These doc-uments contain only your relevant medical information.
These document automation technolo-gies are used through secure medical software is called Best Practice.
All users of the medical software have their own unique user credentials and password and can only access information that is relevant to their role in the practice team.
The practice complies with the Australian privacy legislation and APPs to pro-tect your information.
All data, both electronic and paper are stored and managed in accordance with the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners Privacy and managing health information guidance.
Using Health Information for Quality Improvement and Research
We use patient health information to assist in improving the quality of care we give to all our patients by reviewing the treatments used in the practice.
We may also use information that does not identify you in research projects to improve health care in the community. You will normally be informed if your information is to be used for this pur-pose and will have the opportunity to refuse to have your unidentified infor-mation used in this way.
In some circumstances, where the research serves an important public in-terest, identifiable medical records can be used for medical research without your consent under guidelines issued by the National Health and Medical Re-search Council. An official ethics com-mittee must approve this research.
Wherever practicable, the information used for research will not be in a form that would enable you to be identified. The publication of research results, which use your information, will never be in a form that enables you to be identified.
Security of Information in the Practice
Most medical practices now keep their medical records on a computer system. We will ensure that any of your per-sonal information that is put on com-puter will be kept private by only allowing access by authorised staff. We will also ensure system back-ups are kept safe and away from any unauthorised contact.
Electronic Communication of Your Health Information
You acknowledge we use electronic communication systems such as fax, email, secure document exchange via systems like Health Link and Promedi-cus, MyHealthRecords, Health Profes-sional Online Services and the like. You permit us to use the above and similar methods to communicate your health information to relevent parties includ-ing other health practitioners, health bodies and the government as outlined within this privacy policy.
Your Access to Your Health In-formation
You have access to the information con-tained in your medical record, except for practitioners notes which are at the discretion of the practitioner. You may ask your doctor about any aspect of your health care including information in your record. We believe that sharing information is important for good com-munication between you and your doc-tor and for good health care.
Information in your record can be pro-vided to you by way of an accurate and up to date summary of your care, for instance if you are moving away and are transferring to a new doctor. Do not hesitate to ask your doctor if you want a summary of your care for any reason. If you request a summary or direct access to your full medical record your doctor will need to take out any information provided by others on a confidential basis. Your doctor will also need to con-sider the risk of any physical or mental harm to you or any other person that may result from disclosure of your health information. Your doctor may also keep their practitioners notes at their discretion.
Your doctor will be pleased to provide a full explanation of the health summary or medical record provided.
Depending on the amount of work in-volved, you may be asked to contribute to the cost of gathering/collating and providing the information.
Neither a summary or a full record can be obtained simply by asking recep-tion. You may ask but you will likely be required to have a consultation with the practitioner.
Resolving Concerns Around the Privacy of Your Health In-formation
If you have any concerns regarding the privacy of your health information or regarding the accuracy of the infor-mation held by the practice, you should discuss these with your doctor. Inaccu-rate information will be corrected or your concerns noted in the records if it is not possible or desirable to alter the original record.
Further information on Privacy Legisla-tion is available from:
Office of the Federal Privacy Commis-sioner 1300 363 992