Privacy Policy

About your privacy

Family Planning NSW is committed to protecting your privacy and to handling your personal information in a responsible manner in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), the Privacy Amendment (Enhancing Privacy Protection) Act 2012, the Australian Privacy Principles and relevant NSW privacy laws and regulations (referred to as privacy legislation).

This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use and disclose your personal information, how you may access that information and how you may seek the correction of any information. It also explains how you may make an enquiry or a complaint about a breach of privacy legislation.

This Privacy Policy is current from 12 March 2014. From time to time we may make changes to our policy, processes and systems in relation to how we handle your personal information. We will update this Privacy Policy to reflect any changes. Those changes will be available on our website and in Family Planning NSW centres.

You can view further information about confidentiality and privacy for young people.

Collection

We collect your personal information when you:

• attend our clinics for care and treatment
• apply for a position
• enquire about a training course
• make a purchase from our Shop
• apply to join a research project
• complete an on-line form, subscribe to an email list or make other enquires
• make a donation to Family Planning NSW.

Depending on the service provided, the information collected may include your name, address, date of birth, gender, health information, family history, credit card and direct debit details and contact details. We may also seek to collect ‘sensitive information’ which includes racial or ethnic origin. Information collected will be stored on our electronic records systems.

We collect information in various ways, such as over the phone or in writing, in person in our Centres, or over the internet in the case of online transactions. Wherever practicable we will only collect information from you personally.

In the case of clinical care, we may also need to collect information from other sources such as treating specialists, radiologists, pathologists, hospitals and other health care providers. In emergency situations we may also need to collect information from the person nominated by you as your emergency contact or from the relatives or friends accompanying you.

We will retain the information collected for only as long as necessary for administrative purposes or as required by law. We may be required by law to retain medical records for certain periods of time depending on your age at the time we provide services.

Use and Disclosure

We will treat your personal information as strictly private and confidential. We will only use or disclose it for purposes directly related to the purpose for which it was collected, or in ways that you would reasonably expect that we may use it. For example, the disclosure of blood test results to your specialist or requests for x-rays.

There are circumstances where we may be permitted or required by law to disclose your personal information to third parties. For example, to Medicare, Police or insurers. We may also from time to time provide statistical data to third parties for research purposes.

We may disclose information about you to outside contractors to carry out activities on our behalf, such as an IT service provider, solicitor or a quality auditor reviewing our clinical practice. We impose security and confidentiality requirements on how they handle your personal information. Outside contractors are required not to use information about you for any purpose except for those activities we have asked them to perform.

Data Quality and Security

We will take reasonable steps to ensure that your personal information is accurate, complete, up to date and relevant. When you attend our service, our staff may ask you to confirm that your contact details are correct. We request that you let us know if any of the information we hold about you is incorrect or out of date.

Personal information that we hold is protected by:

• securing our premises;
• placing passwords and varying access levels on databases to limit access and protect electronic information from unauthorised interference, access, modification and disclosure; and
• providing locked cabinets and rooms for the storage of physical records.

Corrections

If you believe that the information we have about you is not accurate, complete or up-to-date, please contact us, using the form below.

Direct marketing
If you are included on our mailing lists you may opt out at any time by clicking on the unsubscribe link on the email received or using the form below to ask to be removed from the list.

Access

You are entitled to request access to your records, including training and clinical records. Please contact us using the form below and we will respond within a reasonable time. We may deny access to your medical records in certain circumstances permitted by law, for example, if disclosure may cause a serious threat to your health or safety. We will always tell you why access is denied and the options you have to respond to our decision. There may be a fee for the administrative costs of retrieving and providing you with copies of your medical records.

Complaints

If you have a complaint about the privacy of your personal information, please contact us using the form below -  we will consider the details and attempt to resolve it in accordance with our complaints handling procedures. If you are dissatisfied with our handling of a complaint or the outcome you may make an application to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner or the Information and Privacy Commission NSW.

Overseas Transfer of Data

We will not transfer your personal information to an overseas recipient unless we have your consent or we are required to do so by law.