Privacy Policy
At Skin Partners, we respect your rights to privacy in compliance with the Australian Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) ‘Privacy Act’.
When you register with Skin Partners as a New Patient, our registration form requires your signed consent to collect, use, hold and share your personal information.
Use of personal Information
We collect, hold, use and share your personal information for the following purposes:
to provide medical services to you and information about our practice;
to communicate with you about the medical care 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 with efficient practice management including appointment management, audits, staff training, accreditation;
to help with practice account management including billings, insurance and health fund claims, unpaid accounts;
for consultations with other medical professionals involved in your medical care, and to transfer information to My Health Records if applicable;
to obtain, analyse and discuss test results from diagnostic and pathology laboratories;
information can also be disclosed through an electronic transfer of prescriptions service;
to liaise with government and regulatory bodies e.g. Medicare, Department of Veteran’s Affairs;
We require additional signed consent to use your personal information and clinical photographs for any other purpose e.g. social media, teaching and research.
Your personal information may also be provided to third parties if we are legally obliged to do so by a court subpoena, statutory authority, search warrant, coronial summons or to defend a legal action.
We may provide your personal information to third parties involved in your care, such as your guardians or a person exercising power of attorney or enduring power of attorney.
Data storage, quality & security
We commit to maintain the reliability, accuracy, completeness and currency of your personal information with utmost privacy and security. We take reasonable steps to protect all personal information held from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. This include, but are not limited to:
storing personal information on access-restricted computer servers;
the use of asymmetric encryption and Australian data centres when backing up personal information to cloud services;
enforcing staff confidentiality agreements;
following secure document retention and destruction policies.
Accessing and amending your personal information
You have the right to request access and amend your personal information if it is incorrect or incomplete. If you make a request to access your personal information by telephone or in writing, we will provide you suitable means of accessing it within a reasonable timeframe. An administration fee may be payable to cover ours costs of providing you this service.
Complaints
If you have questions about privacy-related issues, or believe we have breached your privacy, please contact us in writing so that we can investigate this matter further. We will usually respond to your request within 15 business days.
If you are dissatisfied with our response, you may refer the matter to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.
Review & Changes to Privacy Policy
We may alter this Privacy Policy following any legislative change or upon a review of our information handling processes.