Sunshine Coast Children's Occupational Therapy

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Privacy Policy

Who we are

Our website address is: https://littletherapeas.com.au.

LittleTherapeas Privacy Policy Current as of 1 January 2020 (Our privacy policy is revised on a regular basis in line with the OAIC legislation)

LittleTherapeas is committed to ensuring your personal information is professionally managed in accordance with all Australian Privacy Principles (APPs). 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 share it with third parties.

What personal information we collect and why

When you register as a patient of our practice, your health care professional  and/or their support team will need to collect your personal information so they can provide you with the best possible healthcare services. We also use it for directly related business activities, such as financial claims and payments, practice audits, accreditation and normal business processes.

The personal information we collect and hold generally includes:

  • Your name, address, date of birth, contact details
  • Information about your health condition, medical history, social and family history, risk factors, medications, allergies, adverse events, immunisations and treatment you may have already received.
  • Medicare number or DVA number for identification and claiming purposes.
  • Private health fund details.

Only practice staff who need to see your personal information will have access to it. All practice staff have signed a Confidentiality Agreement as part of their Employment Contract with us.

How we collect your personal information

 Our practice will collect your personal information: Directly and in person, over the phone, by email, SMS, social media, through our website or by completing our online or hard copy forms.

When you make your first appointment, our practice staff will collect your personal and demographic information via your registration. If it is not possible to collect it from you directly, we may also collect this information from:

  • 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 Private Health Fund, Medicare or DVA.

Who we share your personal information with and when

  • Other healthcare providers
  • Third parties who work with our practice for business purposes (such as IT providers and accreditation agencies)
  • Statutory requirement to lawfully share certain personal information, such as mandatory notification of certain diseases
  • Court subpoenas required or authorised by law
  • When 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
  • During the course of providing medical services through Electronic Transfer of Prescriptions (eTP), or My Health Record system. NB: Specify other eHealth services your practice may participate in and any other disclosures specific to your practice

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.

Only those people that need to access your personal 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.

How we store and protect your personal information

Your personal information may be stored at our practice as paper records, electronic records, audio recordings, x-rays, CT scans, videos and photos. Our practice stores all personal information securely, and has strict protocols and policies to ensure your personal information is protected from misuse, loss, interference or unauthorised access:

Electronic format is encrypted and password protected.

Hard copy records and information is stored in secure locked cabinets.

All staff and contractors must sign confidentiality agreements prior to commencing work with and for our practice.

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

Our practice will take reasonable steps to correct your personal information where the information is not accurate or up to date. We will ask you at different times, to verify your information held by our practice is correct and up to date.

You have the right to access and correct personal information that we hold about you, in electronic or hard copy format. If you wish to access or correct your personal information we request that you put it in writing and contact the Practice Manager (admin@littletherapeas.com.au). Your request for access and/or correction will be processed within 30 days.

While we do not charge an application or processing fee, you may be charged administration, photocopying or other fees to reasonably cover our costs in fulfilling your request.

How you can lodge a privacy related complaint and how it will be handled at our practice

If you have any concerns about your privacy or wish to make a complaint about a privacy breach, contact our Practice Manager (admin@littletherapeas.com.au). You should provide us with sufficient details regarding your complaint together with any supporting information. We will take steps to investigate the issue and will notify you in writing of the outcome within 30 days from the receipt date of original written complaint.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you can contact us directly to discuss your further  concerns, or lodge a complaint with the Australian Information Commissioner at http://www.oaic.gov.au or by calling 1300 363 992.

Privacy and our website

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

 

An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Media

If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Cookies

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

How long we retain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

What rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

Where we send your data

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.

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 requested or authorized by law to only deal with identified individuals.

Policy review statement

This privacy policy will be reviewed regularly to ensure it is in accordance with any changes that may occur. We will notify our patients of these changes via our website and our handout hard copy Privacy Policy available at our practice premises.