Privacy Policy

Where practicable, we will collect your personal information directly from you, but we may sometimes also collect information from third parties, including family members, referring clinicians and other healthcare professionals and service provider organisations. We will only collect health information from a third party if you have consented or where we are otherwise permitted by law to do so, such as in a medical emergency. We may also operate video surveillance systems at our facilities for the purposes of maintaining the safety of our staff, patients and other persons visiting our premises. This may (though not always) involve the collection of some personal information.

We collect and use personal information for the following purposes:

• Providing our healthcare services;
• Performing activities that are reasonably incidental to our ordinary course operations, such as:
  • administration functions, including scheduling appointments and billing; and
  • education, training, quality assurance and other analytical activities to evaluate and improve our patient management processes, patient outcomes, and broader healthcare and healthcare delivery;
• Dealing with enquiries, complaints and legal proceedings;
• Complying with our legal obligations, including in relation to statutory and public health reporting requirements, such as mandatory reporting of child abuse or the notification of diagnosis of certain communicable diseases;
• Sending marketing and other communications to referring clinicians and other healthcare professionals, such as clinical updates, information about our services, events, and other news relevant to them or their practice; and
• Other purposes with your consent.

In addition to the above, we may also use your information in de-identified form for the purposes of research and product development activities. For example, this may include the development of new diagnostic tools and products, treatment methods and pathways. As we only use de-identified information for these purposes, you will not be identified as part of any of these activities.

Occasionally we may receive requests from external researchers who wish to conduct research using information in identifiable form. Any such researchers must follow strict ethical guidelines, including by asking for your consent to be part of their research. We will not share any identifiable information for research purposes without your consent.

We may need to disclose your information for one or more of the purposes described above. For example, depending on the circumstances, we may need to disclose your information to:

• Referring clinicians and other healthcare professionals, such as pathologists, radiologists, allied health professionals, pharmacists, in relation to the provision of healthcare services to you;
• Government agencies, where we provide health services to you under a contract with that agency and are required to provide the information under the relevant contract;
• Private hospitals and other private healthcare providers, where we provide health services to you under a contract with that provider and are required to provide the information under the relevant contract;
• Your close relatives, close friends, and personal representatives who are legally responsible for your healthcare decisions (though we will not do this if you tell us not to);
• Your lawyers and insurance companies that have been authorised by you to obtain personal information from us;
• Government authorities where we are required to do so by law or in response to an order issued by a court or tribunal, such as where we are required to produce records in relation to court proceedings;
• Medical defence organisations, insurers, medical experts or lawyers who work for us and help us to deal with enquiries, complaints and legal proceedings;
• External service providers and advisors who help us run our business, including software vendors and service providers who help run our IT systems; and
• Other Advara HeartCare group entities.

In some cases, the people we disclose your information to may be based overseas, including in the European Union, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.

If you have chosen to participate in the My Health Record program operated by the Commonwealth Department of Health, we may access personal information stored in your My Health Record if the access permissions you have set allow this. When requested to do so, we may disclose your personal information by uploading your health information electronically to the My Health Record system.

If you do not want us to access personal information stored in your My Health Record, or to upload health information to it, you may opt out or choose to modify access controls within the My Health Record system.

We hold personal information electronically and in hard copy form, both at our own premises and with the assistance of service providers who provide data storage, hosting and cloud computing services. In all cases we implement a range of measures to protect the security of that personal information. Please note that any information that you send to us by electronic means may not be secure in transit unless it is encrypted. We are not responsible for the security of your information before it comes into our possession.

You may request access to any personal information we hold about you by contacting our Privacy Officer using the contact details set out below.

Please also let us know if your personal details change (for example, your name or contact details), or if you notice errors or discrepancies in information we hold about you. You may do this at your next appointment with us or by contacting our Privacy Officer using the contact details set out below.

We may ask you to verify your identity when you make an access or correction request. There may also be circumstances in which we will not be able to comply with your request. In these cases, we will provide reasons for why we can’t comply and will explain what other options may be available to you.

If you visit any of our websites, we may record various technical information such as your IP address, browser type, domain names, access times and referring website addresses. We use this information to run our websites and for analytical purposes.

Our websites may include links to other websites that are run by third parties. We are not responsible for how those third parties may collect, use and share your information. Please carefully review any privacy statements published on the third party websites you visit.

Our websites may use cookies to help identify and interact more effectively with the access device you are using. A cookie is a text file that is placed on a user’s device by a web page server. Cookies cannot be used to run programs or deliver viruses to your device. The cookies we use help us to maintain the continuity of your browsing sessions and remember your details and preferences for when you return.

You have the ability to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. If you choose to decline cookies, you may not be able to fully experience the interactive features of our websites.

We may use Google services such as Google Analytics to analyse usage of our websites from time to time. For more about how Google collects and processes data, please see Google’s privacy policy and their information at:  https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.

If you have comments or concerns relating to this Privacy Policy or wish to make a complaint about our handling of your personal information, please contact our Privacy Officer using the contact details set out below.

We may need to verify your identity and ask for further information, in order to investigate and respond to your concern or complaint. We will aim to respond to you within a reasonable time, and generally within 5 business days.

If we are unable to satisfactorily resolve your concern or complaint, you may wish to contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC). Contact details for the OAIC can be found at the OAIC’s website: https://www.oaic.gov.au.

You may contact our Privacy Officer in relation to any matters covered by this Privacy Policy using the following contact details:

Attention: Advara HeartCare Privacy Officer
3/245 Given Terrace
Paddington, QLD, 4064
E: privacy@advaraheartcare.com

We may review and update this Privacy Policy from time-to-time. A copy of the latest version of this Privacy Policy is always available at advaraheartcare.com.

Details correct as of February 2023.