VOA Medical Practice

Privacy Policy

Victorian Orthopaedic Associates Medical Practice Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

Our practice is committed to best practice in relation to the management of information we collect. This practice has developed a policy to protect patient privacy in compliance with 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;

2. 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:
  • 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
  • any other information about your race, sexuality or religion, when collected by a health service provider.

3. 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, registration form or online 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,

4. 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 communicatet with you in relation to the health service being providedd to you