Privacy Policy
We are committed to protecting your privacy and complying with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Privacy Act) and other relevant state laws about the management of personal information.
Why we collect your personal information
We collect, hold, use and disclose your personal information to carry out functions such as:
• ensuring we are providing the most appropriate service to you
• sending you communications via SMS or email to, for example, remind you about appointments with your psychologist, provide you with treatment resources and questionnaires and send you a copy of your invoices
• enabling you to receive the correct entitlements to benefits and funding for psychology services from third-party payers and to comply with their requirements
• responding to your enquiries, requests or feedback
• updating your records and keeping your information up to date.
If you have any concerns about the personal information we have asked you to provide please let us know.
How we collect your personal information
Replenish Psychology & Support Services will, where practicable, collect information directly from you. We collect your personal information mainly when you deal with us over the phone, have contact with us in person, give or send us a letter or document or when you interact with us online via our website, email, SMS, and social media channels (please note that social media channels will handle your personal information for their own purposes and have their own Privacy Policy). We may also collect personal information about you, including sensitive information, indirectly from other sources such as your GP or other healthcare professionals, government agencies administering your entitlements and benefits, a carer, a legal professional or a person responsible for your healthcare decisions.
How we hold your personal information
Replenish Psychology & Support Services collects and holds your personal information in electronic form. The majority of the information collected is stored in the psychology practice’s systems. We also hold some of your personal information securely on our servers and computer systems. Some information may be collected in paper-based documents which may be converted to electronic form and the original paper copy destroyed in a secure manner when we no longer need it. We are legally required to hold clients’ personal information for a minimum of 7 years from the date of last entry in your record or if you are a minor until you attain or would have attained 25 years of age.
Disclosure of your personal information
There are circumstances where we may be permitted or required by law to disclose your personal information to third parties. Common situations in which we may disclose your personal information to third parties are when:
1. you have consented to the disclosure; or
2. we reasonably believe that disclosure is necessary to lessen or prevent a serious threat to the life, health or safety of any individual, or to public health or safety; or
3. you would reasonably expect your personal information to be disclosed and disclosure to that third party is for a purpose directly related to the primary purpose for which your personal information was collected (see Why we collect your personal information), for example, to the ambulance service, government agencies and other third-party payers administering subsidies and benefits to which you may be entitled such as Medicare and Department of Veterans Affairs; or
4. it is required or authorised by or under Australian law or a court/tribunal order.
We engage external service providers to us for the purposes of providing services to your psychologist and managing our business, including software providers, payment systems operators, IT and data security service providers, website hosting service providers, our insurers, our professional advisors such as accountants, bookkeepers, and lawyers. Your personal information may be used and disclosed to them to facilitate these arrangements.
During the Coronavirus pandemic, or any other future health emergency, we may be required to inform local health authorities that you have been in the practice. If required, we will only provide the minimum information necessary and required by the health authorities for contact tracing purposes.
Your personal information will not be used, sold, rented, or disclosed for any other purpose. Where we have collected a government-related identifier, such as your Medicare or DVA number, we will only use or disclose that identifier as required or permitted by law.
Access to personal information and correction
You can ask for access or correction of your personal information, if you believe it to be inaccurate, in writing and we must respond within 30 days. We may ask you to verify your identity before we give you access to your information or correct it, and we will try to make the process as simple as possible. Access to your personal information may be declined in accordance with privacy laws, for example, where giving you access would put you or another person at risk of harm. In this circumstance, we must notify you in writing setting out the reasons.
We do not provide copies of information records without a court subpoena if they contain sensitive information that may be harmful if read without a psychologist present to explain the information appropriately. Where a person requesting access to your personal information is an authorised representative of yours, such as a lawyer or guardian, we will ask the representative to provide evidence of their authority. We may also ask you to provide current and informed consent to us before releasing your personal information. We take reasonable steps to ensure that the personal information we hold about you is accurate, up-to-date and complete. If you believe it to be incorrect or out of date you can ask that we correct it. If it is not possible for us to correct it, you can ask us to associate with it, for example, attach or link a statement that you believe the information is incorrect and why. If we make a correction and we have disclosed the incorrect information to others, you can ask us to tell them about the correction. We must do so unless there is a valid reason not to.
Please discuss any concerns you may have about this Privacy Policy or your privacy with us in person in the first instance, we are more than happy to answer any questions.