In order to provide its services to you, IVF Australia needs to collect and use personal information about you.? This policy explains what information we may need to collect and how it will be used, including possible disclosure to third parties, and rights you have in relation to that information.
We appreciate the sensitivity of personal health information, particularly in an area that is as important to you as fertility treatment, and undertake to keep your information confidential and use it only in accordance with this policy.
1. Collection of Personal Information for Advice and Treatment
IVF Australia and its medical practitioners and staff will collect the information that is necessary for us to provide advice and treatment to you or there is a statutory requirement for collection.? This information may include:
- your contact details and occupation;
- your medical history;
- your family medical history;
- your symptoms, diagnosis and recommended treatment;
- ethnicity;
- contact details;
- Medicare/private health fund details; and
- billing/account details.
The information will normally be collected directly from you. There may be occasions when we will need to obtain information from other sources, including other medical practitioners, health funds or health providers and, with your consent, from family members.
2. Use & Disclosure
IVF Australia and its medical practitioners and staff will use and disclose your personal information for a range of purposes related to your treatment.? These purposes may include:
- Disclosure of your information within the treating team for the purposes of your treatment;
- Communication with referring medical practitioners;
- Referral to another medical practitioner, hospital or health provider;
- Sending of specimens for analysis;
- Account keeping and billing, including Medicare and private health insurance claims;
- The management of our practice, including quality assurance, practice accreditation and database maintenance;
- Complaints handling and notification to our insurers;
- Disclosure to third parties where legally required to do so, such as producing documents in answer to a court subpoena or mandatory reporting of certain notifiable diseases.
- Compliance with our regulatory requirements to:
- Make a small sample of case-notes available for confidential review by our auditors at annual audits to demonstrate that our practice complies with the national Reproductive Technology Accreditation Committee Code of Practice.
- Submit a summary (with identifying information removed) of every treatment cycle we perform, to the Australia and New Zealand Assisted Reproduction Database
In addition, we may use non-identifying information taken from your medical file for data analysis and research.
3. IVF Australia Fertility Forum
If you choose to join the IVF Australia on-line Fertility Forum, we will need to obtain personal information about you as part of the website user registration process.? We may also use a feature of your browser called a cookie to assign your computer a “User ID”.? However, the cookie does not contain information by which you can be personally identified.
Any information that you post on the Fertility Forum will be able to be accessed by other Forum members, subject to the Forum’s terms and conditions of use.? By posting the information, you give consent for your personal information to be used in this way.
4. Access
Except in a very limited range of circumstances recognised under relevant privacy legislation, you are entitled to access the personal information we hold about you at any time convenient to both yourself and IVF Australia. Your request should be forwarded in writing. A fee will be charged for staff time in retrieving files and photocopying to process the request.
5. Accuracy of Personal Information
IVF Australia aims to ensure that the personal information we hold is accurate, complete and up-to-date.? If you dispute the accuracy of the information we have recorded, you should notify us in writing.? It is our policy that steps will be taken to record your corrections, and place them with your file. However, the original record will not be erased.
6. Retention of Records
In order to comply with relevant regulatory requirements, we retain records relating to the use of donated gametes or embryos (including the identity of the donor, the recipient and any offspring born as a result of the donation) for a period of 50 years.? It is our policy to retain other medical records for a period of 25 years from the date of last treatment or the date of birth of any child born as a result of the treatment, whichever is the later.? Personal information that does not form part of a medical record will be destroyed or de-identified once it is no longer required for the purpose for which it was collected.