Privacy Statement

Catholic Healthcare is committed to treating you with dignity and respecting your right to privacy.  In the course of dealing with you, Catholic Healthcare collects, uses and discloses personal and/or health information necessary for the provision of services in accordance with this policy and Federal and State Privacy Laws.

Collection
Our organisation collects personal and/or health information required to provide services to you, to comply with our obligations and communicate with you about our services.

We will collect personal information directly from you unless it is not practical or reasonable to do so or you have granted us permission to obtain the information from someone else. For example, in an emergency situation, we may have to collect information from your relatives, friends, and paramedics etc. to commence your care.  Every effort will be made to collect the personal information in an environment that maintains confidentiality.

In some circumstances it will be important for your ongoing care that you provide full and frank personal information.  If you choose not to provide the personal information we may not be able to provide services to you.

If you are part of a residential community or participate in social activities, you may be included in photographs etc, but we will not use or disclose these images except in accordance with this policy or with your consent.

Protection and Storage
Information collected may be held in paper and/or electronic systems and steps have been taken to ensure the security of this information.

We are obliged by law to retain health and personal history records for certain periods of time depending on the type of record and service provided. We have systems in place, including passwords, secure storage, etc to protect your personal information from loss, unauthorised access and misuse.

Use and Disclosure
Our primary use of your personal information is in the provision of services to you including treatment, care, pastoral care, accommodation and any related services including billing and scheduling.  In addition to this, we may also use personal information for training, research, quality, safety activities and in our administration and business activities.

Your information may need to be disclosed to government bodies and official organisations as required, to our advisors from time to time, to health care providers who may be involved in your treatment or care and as required at law.

We may also use non-sensitive personal information for communicating with you and your representative/s about our services, news, upcoming events and fundraising activities.

To ensure the confidentiality and appropriate use of your personal information, all our staff are bound by a formal code of conduct and in many cases also by professional codes of ethics.

 

Access by You
You are entitled to seek access the personal information including health information held by us.  We encourage you to inform us of any changes to your personal information as soon as possible. You may ask us to correct any error or omission in your personal information.

If you wish to view your personal or health record please ensure that a request is made in writing.  To ensure privacy of your information, appropriate identification requirements will need to be met.  A small fee may be charged if the personal information is to be photocopied.  In certain circumstances an appointment may be desirable which should be made in advance.

We may decline to provide access in special circumstances if a treating health professional advises us that they consider the access would be harmful to you or another person.

Request for access or corrections to your personal information should be addressed to the Manager of the service you attend or have attended or to the address below.

 

Contacting Us
If you have any questions regarding our Privacy Statement, please contact our Online Privacy Officer on 1800 225 474.

Mail:
Catholic Community Services
Online Privacy Officer
PO Box 1011
Meadowbank NSW 2114