Privacy policy

Brunswick Health provides facility and administrative support to independent health practitioners who operate their own businesses within our collective centre. Each practitioner is responsible for their own practice and for compliance with privacy laws relating to the handling of your personal information.

Brunswick Health itself does not provide medical or allied health services. This policy covers the information we handle in our administrative capacity. Your practitioner is separately responsible for the clinical records they hold.

We collect personal information necessary to support the administrative and operational side of the health services provided by independent practitioners at Brunswick Health. On their behalf, this may include:

• Personal details, name, address, date of birth and contact information
• Medical history, health conditions, treatments received, medications and allergies, as provided by you to your practitioner
• Financial information, payment details and insurance information
• Other relevant information, anything else necessary for your care, as required by your health practitioner

Personal information is collected in several ways:

• Directly from you during consultations, over the phone, or through this website when booking appointments or contacting your practitioner
• From files you choose to attach to a website enquiry, a referral, a test result or a photo. These are sent with your message as an email attachment and are not stored on this website or on any storage service; the clinic's inbox holds the only copy
• From third parties such as your GP or other health providers involved in your care, with your consent
• From insurance companies and other service providers who process claims or payments

You are welcome to ring us on (03) 9380 8099 with a general question, whether a practitioner treats a particular condition, what an appointment costs, where to park, without giving your name.

Treatment is different. A practitioner cannot assess or treat you without a clinical record in your name, both because safe care depends on knowing your history and because they are required to keep records of the care they provide.

Information is used primarily to support the independent practitioners operating within Brunswick Health and to manage our administrative duties. Specifically, to:

• Enable independent health practitioners to deliver their services
• Manage bookings, payments and other administrative functions
• Communicate with you about appointments, treatments and services
• Comply with legal and regulatory obligations

We disclose personal information only where necessary to support the practitioners operating within our facility and to meet regulatory requirements. It may be disclosed to:

• Healthcare providers involved in your treatment, but only with your explicit consent
• Health insurance companies, Medicare, DVA, WorkSafe or the TAC, to process claims and payments
• Regulatory bodies, where required by law
• Our online booking system, when you book an appointment
• Our payment provider, when you pay by card or place a shop order, we never receive or store your full card number
• The company that hosts this website and screens our forms for automated abuse
• The service that delivers our email to you
• Our customer management system, which holds our record of your enquiry and runs the chat window on this website

We do not disclose your personal information to third parties for marketing purposes without your consent. Each practitioner is separately responsible for obtaining your consent for disclosures relating to their own services.

When you send an enquiry, place an order or start a chat on this website, your name, your contact details and what you wrote are recorded in our customer management system. This is how reception keeps track of who has been in touch, so that nothing is missed. That system stores and processes the information on servers outside Australia, principally in the United States.

Please keep chat messages to practical questions, appointment times, fees, parking, what to bring. A chat window is not a secure channel for clinical detail, and anything about your health is better discussed with your practitioner at your appointment or by phone on (03) 9380 8099.

We have described these by what they do rather than by name. If you want to know exactly who handles your information, ask us on (03) 9380 8099 and we will tell you.

Website usage data is handled separately and is described in "Cookies, analytics and advertising" below.

Some of the providers above, and their own subcontractors, store or process information outside Australia, principally in the United States. Before disclosing personal information to an overseas recipient we take reasonable steps to make sure it is handled consistently with the Australian Privacy Principles, as APP 8 requires.

Clinical records themselves are held by your practitioner in their own practice management system and are not sent overseas as part of providing your care.

This website sets cookies, which are small files stored by your browser. Some are essential. They remember what is in your cart and keep your session secure, and the site cannot work without them.

The rest measure how the website is used, so we can see which pages help people find the care they are looking for and whether our advertising is working. They record:

• Pages you view, how long you spend on them and which links you follow
• Your device, browser and screen size
• Your internet (IP) address, which also gives an approximate location, usually the city rather than the street
• How you arrived, including whether you came from a search result or an advertisement

This measurement is carried out on our behalf by Google, through Google Analytics and Google Ads. Google acts as our service provider for measurement and advertising, and may combine what it receives with data it already holds about your browser.

Your health information is never used for advertising. Nothing you tell a practitioner, nothing in a clinical record, and nothing you type into a form on this website, your name, email address, phone number or date of birth, is sent to Google. What it receives is website usage data that does not identify you by name.

Using this website means these cookies are set. You can prevent them at any time, and doing so affects nothing about your care, your booking or what you can do on this site:

• Switch on "Do Not Track" or Global Privacy Control in your browser settings, this site checks for both and stops tracking when it sees them
• Block or delete cookies in your browser settings, which applies to every website you visit
• Google publishes a free browser add-on that opts you out of Google Analytics everywhere, search for "Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on"
• Turn off personalised advertising in your Google account settings

We have implemented measures to protect personal information from misuse, loss and unauthorised access, including:

• Secure storage of both physical and electronic records
• Access restricted to authorised personnel
• Regular privacy and data protection training for staff
• IT security measures including firewalls and encryption

Health practitioners operating within Brunswick Health are also required to implement their own privacy and security measures.

• Clinical records, held by your practitioner and kept for at least 7 years from your last appointment, as Victorian law requires of health records. Where you were treated as a child, until you turn 25.
• Enquiries that do not become appointments, kept while we might still be of use to you, then deleted.
• Payment and order records, kept as long as tax and consumer law requires.

When we no longer need information and are not required to keep it, we destroy it or de-identify it.

If a data breach happens that is likely to cause you serious harm, we will tell you and notify the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, as the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme requires.

Where the breach involves records held by a practitioner rather than by us, we will work with them so that you hear about it once, from whichever of us holds the information.

You have the right to access personal information held by Brunswick Health or your health practitioner, and to request corrections. Contact us using the details on this page to make a request.

We will respond within a reasonable timeframe and will work with the relevant practitioner where the information is held by them rather than by us.

If you have concerns about how your personal information has been handled, or believe your privacy has been breached, contact us and we will investigate and respond promptly.

Where your concern relates to a practitioner's handling of your information, we will help direct your complaint to that practitioner.

If you are not satisfied with the response, you can escalate a privacy complaint to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au or on 1300 363 992.

We may update this policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or to comply with new legal requirements. The current version is always the one published here, and the date it last changed is shown at the top of this page.

If we make a change that materially affects how we handle information we already hold about you, we will take reasonable steps to tell you rather than relying on this page alone.

For any privacy question or request, contact us on (03) 9380 8099 or through our contact page. Where your question is about a clinical record, we will put you in touch with the practitioner who holds it.