Privacy policy

  1. Introduction

Rainforest Clinical Psychology (we or the Clinic) respects your right to privacy and are committed to safeguarding the privacy of our clients.

  1. What is Personal Information

We comply with the Australian Privacy Principles (the APP) contained in Schedule 1 of The Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (The Act). The APP can be viewed here: https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2021C00139/Download

This Policy sets out how we collect and treat your personal information in accordance with the APP and our professional obligations.

The terms “personal information” and “sensitive information” are used in this Policy.

Personal information is information or an opinion (whether true or not) that is about you or information that can reasonably identify you.

Sensitive information is a subcategory of personal information and relevantly includes information or an opinion which is information relating to your health, racial or ethnic origin, genetic information, and biometric information (physical or psychological information).

  1. How we deal with your personal information

What personal information does the Clinic collect and why?

We collect personal information in order to provide appropriate healthcare services for you.

If you register as a client, our treatment consent form will request your consent to allow us to collect, use, hold and share your personal information to enable us to provide you with appropriate healthcare and to manage our business. We may also collect information about other persons which you provide to us, for example (but not limited to) when you name an emergency contact person.

The personal information we may collect includes:

  1. Information to enable us to identify and communicate with you (e.g., name, phone number, address, location, email address);
  2. Information to enable us to provide you with appropriate clinical psychology services (e.g, your health information);
  3. Information to facilitate payments (e.g, your bank details);
  4. Information to manage and improve our business operations and services (e.g., information about your use of our website).

How is personal information collected?

We collect personal information from you in a variety of ways, including when you become a client of our services, when you interact with us electronically or in person, when you access our website and/or when we provide our services to you.

We may receive personal information from other healthcare providers (e.g. your referring GP or Psychiatrist) and third parties (e.g. insurers). If we do, this information will also be managed in accordance in this Privacy Policy.

How is personal information used?

We may use your personal information to:

  1. Provide you with our clinical psychology services;
  2. Facilitate our business operations (e.g, to arrange appointments or payments, manage our website);
  3. Seek feedback from you about our services;
  4. Provide information and updates to you, to other health care providers, where required to do so at law and when you request us to provide the information to a third party;
  5. Comply with legal obligations (e.g. court orders).

Sensitive information will only be used to carry out our clinical psychology service to best suit your needs or to comply with legal obligations.

When will my personal information be disclosed to others?

We are also required under our Code of Ethics to safeguard the confidentiality of your personal information obtained as part of our healthcare services.

The Australian Psychological Society Code of Ethics can be viewed here.

We may disclose your personal information to a third party where:

  1. you have provided your consent to disclose that information, or someone with legal authority to act on your behalf has provided us with that consent;
  2. we are under a legal obligation to do so;
  3. if we believe that disclosure is necessary to lessen or prevent a serious threat to the life, health or safety of someone or to public health or safety;
  4. it is reasonably necessary to disclose your personal information to the third party to protect our property or safety;
  5. to our employees, officers, insurers, professional advisers, or contractors insofar as reasonably necessary for the purposes set out in this Policy;
  6. personal information is supplied to a third party when it is required for the delivery of the healthcare service or to manage the business. Such third parties may be Medicare Australia, Private health insurers, Department of Veterans Affairs, other insurers as far as we are required to do so to deliver the health service;
  7. from time to time we need to disclose personal information to comply with a legal requirement, such as a law, regulation, court order, subpoena, warrant, in the course of a legal proceeding or in response to a law enforcement agency request.

By providing us with personal information, you consent to the terms of this Policy and the types of disclosure covered by this Policy. Where we disclose your personal information to third parties, we will request that the third party follow this Policy regarding handling your personal information.

How is personal information stored and disposed of?

We store personal information in order to effectively carry out our healthcare services.

We are committed to ensuring that the information you provide to us is secure. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure information and protect it from misuse, interference, loss and unauthorised access, modification and disclosure.

The transmission and exchange of information is carried out at your own risk. We cannot guarantee the security of any information that you electronically transmit to us or receive from us. Although we take measures to safeguard against unauthorised disclosures of information, we cannot assure you that personal information that we collect will not be disclosed in a manner that is inconsistent with this Policy.

We will use all reasonable endeavours to keep your personal information in a secure environment. Our procedures are designed to prevent your personal information being accessed by unauthorised personnel, lost or misused.

If you believe there has been an unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal information, please let us know by contacting the principal using the details under ‘Principal details’ below.

Your client record is kept for seven years from the date that you last contacted us. After that time, your records are destroyed, unless we are required by law to retain the records for a longer period.

Personal information that is not part of a client record will be kept until it is no longer needed for any purpose under this Policy, after which time it will be destroyed, unless we are required by law to retain the personal information for a longer period.

  1. Access, enquiries and complaints

How can I access my personal information held by the Clinic?

You can request access to your personal information by writing to the principal psychologist using the details provided under ‘Principal details’ below.

Requests for access will be approved unless otherwise excluded under the APP.

Where a request for access is approved, a small administrative fee may apply for us to provide the information requested by you.

How can I amend my personal information held by the Clinic?

If you believe that personal information we hold about you is inaccurate, out of date, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading, please contact the principal using the details provided under ‘Principal details’ below.

Requests for amendment to your personal information will be dealt with in accordance with the APP.

We reserve the right to refuse to provide you with information that we hold about you, in certain circumstances set out in the Privacy Act.

  1. Complaints about privacy

What if I have a question or complaint?

If you have any questions about this Policy, or if you would like to make a complaint about our management of your personal information, please write to the principal psychologist using the details provided under ‘Principal details’ below.

We take complaints very seriously and will respond shortly after receiving your complaint.

Alternatively, you may wish to seek advice from the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. The OAIC website is: https://www.oaic.gov.au/

  1. Overseas disclosure

In some circumstances, disclosure of your personal information to a third party may mean that your personal information is transferred overseas. This may occur if we are providing our clinical psychology services digitally (e.g. through telehealth).

By signing the consent form for us to provide health services to you, you are consenting to the transfer of your personal information digitally including overseas if it is necessary to do so.

  1. Changes to Privacy Policy

We may change this Policy in the future. If it does change, we will publish our new Policy on our website, and we encourage you to review it at any time. Our clients will also be provided with a copy of the new Policy.

The new Policy will be effective from the date it becomes available on our website.

  1. Website

When you visit our website

When you come to our website (rainforestclinicalpsychology.com.au) we may collect certain information such as browser type, operating system, website visited immediately before coming to our site, etc. This information is used in an aggregated manner to analyse how people use our site, such that we can improve our service.

Cookies

We may from time to time use cookies on our website. Cookies are very small files which a website uses to identify you when you come back to the site and to store details about your use of the site. Cookies are not malicious programs that access or damage your computer. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies but you can choose to reject cookies by changing your browser settings. However, this may prevent you from taking full advantage of our website. Our website may from time to time use cookies to analyse website traffic and help us provide a better website visitor experience. In addition, cookies may be used to serve relevant ads to website visitors through third party services such as Google Adwords. These ads may appear on this website or other websites you visit.

Third party sites

Our site may from time to time have links to other websites not owned or controlled by us. These links are meant for your convenience only. Links to third party websites do not constitute sponsorship or endorsement or approval of these websites. Please be aware that Rainforest Clinical Psychology is not responsible for the privacy practises of other such websites. We encourage our users to be aware, when they leave our website, to read the privacy statements of each and every website that collects personal identifiable information.

Principal details

Melanie Hautz

Email: admin@rainforestclinicalpsychology.com.au

Address: 247 McLeod Street, Cairns North, Queensland, 4870

Copyright © 2021 Rainforest Clinical Psychology Melanie Hautz |