Privacy Statement

At Hunter Imaging Group we understand that your privacy is important. The following privacy policy is applied to guarantee consistency in the way we use your information across our business.

1. Introduction

Hunter Imaging Group respects and upholds your rights to privacy protection under the National Privacy Principles contained in the Privacy Act 1988. The National Privacy Principles apply to us from their introduction on 21 December 2001.

This policy describes how we manage any personal information we have about you.

2. What personal information about you does Hunter Imaging Group hold?

Hunter Imaging Group may hold the following information about you:

Name, address, telephone number(s)
Date of birth
Occupation
Health information
General Practitioner
Referring Doctor
Returned Service Organisation
Pensioner or Health Care Card Holder
Medicare Number
Transaction details associated with services we have provided to you
Any additional information provided to us by you
Any information you provided to us through patient /referrer surveys

Hunter Imaging Group will destroy or de-identify personal information when no longer required or after its legal obligations to retain the information has expired.

3. How is personal information collected?

Where possible, Hunter Imaging Group collects your personal information directly from you.

However, personal information may also be collected by us from other sources. For example, we may collect personal information about you from your referring Doctor or other health care providers.

4. What does Hunter Imaging Group do with your personal information?

We use personal information about you:

To provide medical treatment and care to you;
To provide information to Medical Practitioners, Registered Nurses and other Allied Health Professionals who provide treatment, necessary follow up treatment and ongoing care;
To assist with any calls you make to us;
for our internal administrative requirements, including for management purposes, funding, service monitoring, planning, evaluation and accreditation activities;
To process private health fund claims and billings;
For internal statistical reporting in a de-identified form;
To provide data in both an identified and de-identified form to State and Federal Government agencies in compliance with numerous legislative Requirements (eg BreastScreen, Cancer Council, National Health and Medical Research Council);
For quality assurance or clinical audit activities where we seek to evaluate and improve the delivery of a particular aspect of our service;
For complaint handling and defence of anticipated or existing legal activities;
To our insurers, brokers, lawyers and other experts for the purposes of addressing liability indemnity arrangements or to obtain advices as to our legal or other obligations;
For planning and evaluation of accreditation activities with our professional bodies such as RANZCR;
If lawfully instructed to reveal information

and with your consent:

To communicate special events;
For media announcements;
To conduct marketing research; and
For research and teaching;
For training and education.
Hunter Imaging Group will not disclose personal information about you to any person, except on a confidential basis to agents that we use in the ordinary operation of our business, such as for data processing, printing or mailing.

You may at any time opt out of receiving any communications from us (other than as required for the operation of our business, eg regarding payment of your account). Notification in writing of this option would be appreciated.

5. Disclosure of personal information to third parties

In certain circumstances, we may disclose personal information to third parties.

We may disclose personal information to your referring doctor, general practitioner and other health service providers, in providing medical treatment and care to you. We may also disclose personal information to other institutions for purposes directly associated with your treatment. For example, we may provide personal information to your health fund for billing, processing of private health fund claims, and audit purposes.

Sometimes we are required by law to disclose your personal information. For example, we may disclose your personal information to a Court in response to a subpoena, or to a party to litigation in response to a document called a “notice of non-party disclosure”.

As your privacy is paramount to us and to ensure that your personal information is not released to third parties pursuant to notices of non-party disclosure requests, unless required by law, we engage lawyers, at our cost, to ensure that these requests are in fact valid and that only the necessary information that is required to be produced, is in fact produced. To ensure your privacy, if it is our view that the requested information sought is not directly relevant to the litigation or need not be produced by law, we will object to producing such record unless ordered by the Court.

Where you are physically or legally incapable of giving consent or you physically cannot communicate consent to disclose, we may disclose personal information to a responsible person as defined in the Privacy Act, if disclosure is necessary to provide appropriate care or treatment to you or for compassionate reasons, provided that disclosure is not contrary to any wish you may have expressed prior to becoming unable to communicate consent.

Where necessary, we may disclose personal information to contractors or agents that we may engage for the purposes set out in item 4 above. For example, personal information may be disclosed to IT contractors in upgrading or fixing IT problems with our computer systems. We may disclose personal information to RANZCR or other professional bodies for accreditation purposes. However, we will not release any personal information without first ensuring that it is necessary and that the third party also has privacy compliance systems in place.

6. Storage

Hunter Imaging Group stores personal information:

Contained in paper based and other hard copy documents located securely within the practice. All practices have security alarms which are in operation outside business hours;
Contained in electronic records in a secure environment; and
Archived to a dedicated storage facility.
Such records are only accessible by those persons who require access to the personal information for the purpose of carrying out their employment activities.

7. Openness and access

You may request access to personal information we hold about you by completing a Request to Access Patient Record Form. If you wish to access the records please contact the Privacy Officer/Committee, who will arrange for the appropriate Request for Access form to be provided to you. Where we hold information that you are entitled to access, we will endeavour to provide you with a suitable range of choices as to how you may access the record, such as allowing you to personally inspect the record, take notes or copy the record or you may request us to forward a copy of the record to you.

We will endeavour to process any request for access within 30 days of having received your request. We are entitled by law to charge you a reasonable fee for collating, copying and providing you with access to the records.

Hunter Imaging Group may refuse access to records in a number of circumstances. If we deny your request for access to personal information then we will give you our reasons for denial in writing.

If you believe that personal information we hold about you is incorrect, incomplete or inaccurate, then you may request amendment of it. We will consider if the information requires amendment. If we do not agree that there are grounds for amendment, then we will add a note to the personal information stating that you disagree with it.

Any questions about this policy, or any complaint regarding treatment of your privacy by Hunter Imaging Group, should also be made in writing to the address below.

The Client Services Manager
Hunter Imaging Group
PO Box 192
New Lambton NSW 2305

8. Miscellaneous

In this policy “personal information” and “health information” have the same meaning as under the Privacy Act.
We regularly review our policies and procedures to keep up to date with best practices and changes in the law and technology. As a result, we may change this policy from time to time. This Privacy Policy was last updated on 21 December 2001.