Privacy | NSW Health Pathology

Privacy | NSW Health Pathology
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NSW Health Pathol­o­gy and has imple­ment­ed mea­sures to com­ply with its oblig­a­tions under pri­va­cy laws.
Gen­er­al infor­ma­tion about the pri­va­cy of patient infor­ma­tion can be found on the
NSW Health web­site
.
Access to your pathology test results
You have a legal­ly enforce­able right to access your per­son­al infor­ma­tion, includ­ing health infor­ma­tion. You are also able to con­sent to an autho­rised rep­re­sen­ta­tive or third par­ty receiv­ing the infor­ma­tion on your behalf.
You may access your pathol­o­gy test results in a num­ber of dif­fer­ent ways, includ­ing by con­tact­ing the med­ical prac­ti­tion­er who referred you for the test, or through your indi­vid­ual My Health Record.
Alter­na­tive­ly, you can apply for access to results of pathol­o­gy tests con­duct­ed by NSW Health Pathol­o­gy by pro­vid­ing a com­plet­ed
Patient Dec­la­ra­tion and Con­sent Form
and proof of iden­ti­ty (e.g. cur­rent Aus­tralian driver’s licence or pass­port or two oth­er forms of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion that include sig­na­ture and cur­rent address details):
You can sub­mit this form by email to
[email protected]
or by mail to:
The Pri­va­cy Con­tact Offi­cer
NSW Health Pathol­o­gy
PO Box 846
NEWCASTLE NSW 2300 or
You can also apply over the tele­phone by call­ing the NSW Health Pathol­o­gy lab­o­ra­to­ry that con­duct­ed the test and pro­vid­ing proof of your identity.
Access to a Coroners’ report or autopsy report
To obtain a copy of a coro­nial autop­sy report, a request must be made in writ­ing to the Coro­ner. Fur­ther infor­ma­tion is avail­able on the
Coro­ners Court web­site
.
To obtain a copy of a non-coro­nial (i.e. hos­pi­tal) autop­sy report, a request should be made to the deceased person’s med­ical prac­ti­tion­er or the med­ical records depart­ment of the rel­e­vant hospital.
Access to personal information other than test results
If you wish to access your per­son­al health infor­ma­tion held by oth­er NSW Health facil­i­ties (e.g. hos­pi­tal admis­sion or dis­charge notes, refer­ral let­ters, oper­a­tion reports, radi­ol­o­gy reports) you will need to apply to the med­ical records depart­ment or man­ag­er of the health facil­i­ty you attended.
Access to per­son­al infor­ma­tion held by NSW Health Pathol­o­gy oth­er than pathol­o­gy test results can be obtained by mak­ing a writ­ten appli­ca­tion to NSW Health Pathology’s Pri­va­cy Con­tact Offi­cer at PO Box 846, New­cas­tle NSW 2300 or by email to
[email protected]
.
You will be required to pro­vide proof of your iden­ti­ty, and may be required to pay a fee in accor­dance with the
NSW Health – Health Records and Medical/Clinical Reports Charg­ing Pol­i­cy
. We will aim to process your appli­ca­tion with­in 28 days of receipt. Some­times unavoid­able sit­u­a­tions may cause a delay.
Access to your per­son­al infor­ma­tion may be declined in spe­cial cir­cum­stances, such as where pro­vid­ing access would expose you or anoth­er per­son to a risk of harm.
Release of information that is not personal health information
If you wish to apply for access to gov­ern­ment infor­ma­tion under the
Gov­ern­ment Infor­ma­tion (Pub­lic Access) Act 2009 (GIPA Act)
, please refer to our
Infor­ma­tion Guide
.
Privacy complaints
The PPIP Act pro­vides a frame­work for resolv­ing com­plaints con­cern­ing the han­dling of per­son­al and/or health infor­ma­tion of indi­vid­u­als by gov­ern­ment agen­cies. The
NSW Health Pri­va­cy Inter­nal Review Guide­lines
out­line the process that is fol­lowed when a per­son wish­es to seek a review of cer­tain con­duct of NSW Health Pathol­o­gy regard­ing alleged breach­es of either the PPIP or HRIP Acts.
A request for an inter­nal review can be made where it is alleged that NSW Health Pathol­o­gy has:
Breached any of the Health Pri­va­cy Prin­ci­ples (HPP’s) that apply to the agency under the HRIP Act, or
Breached any of the Infor­ma­tion Pro­tec­tion Prin­ci­ples (IPP’s) that apply to the agency under the PPIP Act, or
Breached any code or direc­tion made under either Acts apply­ing to the agency, or
Dis­closed infor­ma­tion on a pub­lic reg­is­ter except in accor­dance with sec­tion 57 (PPIP Act only).
If you have a con­cern relat­ing to your pri­va­cy and you believe that NSW Health Pathol­o­gy has con­tra­vened an IPP or HPP, you may wish to request an inter­nal review to be under­tak­en by the Pri­va­cy Con­tract Officer.
Pri­va­cy Inter­nal Review Infor­ma­tion Sheet
Pri­va­cy Inter­nal Review Appli­ca­tion Form
For fur­ther infor­ma­tion on how to apply for an inter­nal review please con­tact
[email protected]
or refer to the
Infor­ma­tion and Pri­va­cy Com­mis­sion NSW
website.
If you are dis­sat­is­fied with the out­come of the pri­va­cy inter­nal review you may lodge an appli­ca­tion with the
NSW Civ­il and Admin­is­tra­tive Tri­bunal
who can con­duct a review of how your pri­va­cy com­plaint was han­dled by NSW Health Pathology.
Privacy Management Annual Reports
All pub­lic sec­tor agen­cies, includ­ing NSW Health Pathol­o­gy, are required to meet annu­al report­ing oblig­a­tions regard­ing pri­va­cy mat­ters. NSW Health Pathol­o­gy reports are pub­lished on our
Infor­ma­tion Guide
page.
Use of website and Digital Tools
NSW Health Pathol­o­gy col­lects infor­ma­tion from users through their inter­ac­tion with our web­sites and tech­nol­o­gy tools. Any of our web­sites, apps, soft­ware, servers, social media plat­forms, cloud stor­age and devices are col­lec­tive­ly and sev­er­al­ly known as our
Dig­i­tal Tools
for this Pri­va­cy State­ment. This Pri­va­cy State­ment applies to all the inter­ac­tions NSW Health Pathol­o­gy has with you and our Dig­i­tal Tools.
A num­ber of our Dig­i­tal Tools con­tain links to exter­nal web­sites to pro­vide con­tent rel­e­vant to your use. When you open a link to an exter­nal web­site, you will leave our Dig­i­tal Tool. This pri­va­cy state­ment does not cov­er the pri­va­cy prac­tices, the use of cook­ies and track­ing tech­nolo­gies or the con­tent of these exter­nal­ly linked web­sites. There­fore, you should refer to the spe­cif­ic pri­va­cy poli­cies which may be dis­played on each exter­nal website.
As a user of our Dig­i­tal Tools, you are enti­tled to expect that any infor­ma­tion gen­er­at­ed because of your use will be treat­ed with­in the terms of the NSW Government’s pri­va­cy respon­si­bil­i­ties and oblig­a­tions. The NSW Government’s pri­va­cy prac­tices are reg­u­lat­ed by the
Pri­va­cy and Per­son­al Infor­ma­tion Pro­tec­tion Act 1998 and the Health Records and Infor­ma­tion Pri­va­cy Act 2002
.
What infor­ma­tion do we collect?
When you access our Dig­i­tal Tools, we auto­mat­i­cal­ly record infor­ma­tion about your inter­ac­tion with and use of our Dig­i­tal Tools. We col­lect dif­fer­ent types of infor­ma­tion depend­ing on the nature of the inter­ac­tion with you from a num­ber of dif­fer­ent sources includ­ing direct­ly from you and through your use of our Dig­i­tal Tools. For exam­ple, if you down­load and use an app, we will col­lect per­son­al infor­ma­tion to ver­i­fy your iden­ti­ty, and allow you the oppor­tu­ni­ty to use the app ser­vice. Oth­er exam­ples of infor­ma­tion we may col­lect include:
The IP (Inter­net Pro­to­col) address of the machine which has accessed it;
Your top-lev­el domain name;
The address of your server;
The date and time of your vis­it to the web­site or use of the app;
The pages, patient records or infor­ma­tion that you accessed through our Dig­i­tal Tools, and the doc­u­ments downloaded;
The pre­vi­ous web­site vis­it­ed; and
The type of brows­er and oper­at­ing sys­tem you have used.
How is the infor­ma­tion used?
The infor­ma­tion we col­lect is aggre­gat­ed with sim­i­lar logged infor­ma­tion and pub­lished in reports for us to iden­ti­fy pat­terns of usage of our Dig­i­tal Tools. This will assist us in improv­ing our Dig­i­tal Tools. We will also use the infor­ma­tion to oper­ate our busi­ness, which includes analysing our per­for­mance and meet­ing our legal oblig­a­tions and accred­i­ta­tion require­ments. We will not dis­close or pub­lish infor­ma­tion that iden­ti­fies indi­vid­ual machines, or poten­tial­ly iden­ti­fies sub-group­ings of address­es, with­out con­sent or oth­er­wise in accor­dance with the
Pri­va­cy and Per­son­al Infor­ma­tion Pro­tec­tion Act 1998
.
What excep­tions are there to this rule?
We will col­lect, use and dis­close more exten­sive infor­ma­tion than stat­ed above in the fol­low­ing circumstances:
Unau­tho­rised attempts to access files which are not pub­lished NSW Health Pathol­o­gy web pages;
Unau­tho­rised tam­per­ing or inter­fer­ence with files pub­lished on the NSW Health Pathol­o­gy web­sites or relat­ing to our Dig­i­tal Tools;
Unau­tho­rised attempts to index the con­tents of our apps or web­sites by oth­er sites;
Attempts to inter­cept mes­sages of oth­er users of our Dig­i­tal Tools;
Com­mu­ni­ca­tions which are defam­a­to­ry, abu­sive, vil­i­fy indi­vid­u­als or groups or which give rise to a sus­pi­cion that an offence is being com­mit­ted; and
Attempts to oth­er­wise com­pro­mise the secu­ri­ty of the web serv­er, breach the laws of the State of NSW or Com­mon­wealth of Aus­tralia, or inter­fere with the enjoy­ment of our Dig­i­tal Tools by oth­er users.
We reserve the right to make dis­clo­sures to rel­e­vant author­i­ties where the use of our Dig­i­tal Tools rais­es a sus­pi­cion that an offence is being, or has been, com­mit­ted. In the event of an inves­ti­ga­tion, we will pro­vide access to infor­ma­tion to any law enforce­ment agency or reg­u­la­to­ry agency that may exer­cise a war­rant to access this information.
In addi­tion, infor­ma­tion may be used and dis­closed for pub­lic health pur­pos­es and per­son­al infor­ma­tion may also be dis­closed to third par­ties where required by law or oth­er­wise law­ful­ly authorised.
Is the infor­ma­tion stored securely?
The infor­ma­tion we col­lect is stored in an appro­pri­ate­ly secure for­mat and held by NSW Health Pathol­o­gy for record keep­ing pur­pos­es. When the infor­ma­tion is no longer required, and its reten­tion peri­od has expired, it will be dis­posed of appro­pri­ate­ly. Strong data encryp­tion mech­a­nisms may also be used to pro­tect your per­son­al infor­ma­tion dur­ing trans­mis­sion and whilst your infor­ma­tion is stored.
What will we do with information provided in feedback or enquiry forms?
NSW Health Pathol­o­gy pro­vides a feed­back facil­i­ty on its web­site to allow users to pro­vide input into the future devel­op­ment of the site and to com­ment on the pro­vi­sion of ser­vices by NSW Health Pathology.
NSW Health Pathol­o­gy col­lects and holds per­son­al and health infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed via the feed­back facil­i­ty for the pur­pose of respond­ing to and man­ag­ing your feed­back. The pro­vi­sion of per­son­al and health infor­ma­tion via the feed­back facil­i­ty is option­al. Your infor­ma­tion will not be used to add your email address or name to any mail­ing list.
NSW Health Pathol­o­gy may share feed­back that relates to an enti­ty with­in the NSW pub­lic health sys­tem with the rel­e­vant enti­ty for the pur­pose of respond­ing to your feed­back. A response to your feed­back may be pro­vid­ed direct­ly by the enti­ty iden­ti­fied. NSW Health Pathol­o­gy will not oth­er­wise dis­close your per­son­al or health infor­ma­tion with­out your con­sent, unless we are autho­rised or required to by law. NSW Health Pathol­o­gy may pub­lish aggre­gat­ed infor­ma­tion about feed­back on its web­site, to the extent that it does not iden­ti­fy or can­not be used to iden­ti­fy indi­vid­ual users. For fur­ther infor­ma­tion please refer to
NSW Health Patient Privacy.
Data breach public notification register
Under the
Pri­va­cy and Per­son­al Infor­ma­tion Pro­tec­tion Act 1998
(the PPIP Act), NSW Health Pathol­o­gy is required to main­tain a data breach pub­lic noti­fi­ca­tion reg­is­ter. When a pri­va­cy breach cre­ates a seri­ous risk of harm, NSW Health Pathol­o­gy is required to noti­fy the pub­lic and the indi­vid­u­als impact­ed by the breach.
When noti­fy­ing indi­vid­u­als is not pos­si­ble, or there is poten­tial that our noti­fi­ca­tion won’t cov­er every­one impact­ed by the breach, the inci­dent is record­ed on the fol­low­ing data breach pub­lic noti­fi­ca­tion reg­is­ter for 12 months:
There are cur­rent­ly no eli­gi­ble data breach­es to report.
More information
For fur­ther details on how NSW Health Pathol­o­gy pro­tects your pri­va­cy and per­son­al infor­ma­tion, con­tact NSW Health Pathology’s Pri­va­cy Con­tact Offi­cer at PO Box 846, New­cas­tle NSW 2300 or
[email protected]
.
Connect with us
NSW Health Pathology acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the land across NSW whose cultures and customs have nurtured and continue to nurture this land. We would like to pay our respects to the Elders past, present and emerging, for they hold the memories, the traditions, the culture and hopes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples across the state.
Aboriginal Workforce Development
Closing the Gap
NSW Health Pathology acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the land across NSW whose cultures and customs have nurtured and continue to nurture this land. We would like to pay our respects to the Elders past, present and emerging, for they hold the memories, the traditions, the culture and hopes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples across the state.
Aboriginal Workforce Development
Closing the Gap
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