Privacy Policy

a)    Collection of Personal Information

TBMH collects Personal Information and Sensitive Information, including health information, for the purpose of providing services to you. The collection of Personal Information and Sensitive Information in the course of providing you Health Services will be following an informed consent process so that valid consent can be obtained by you.

All Personal Information and Sensitive Information collected for the purpose of medical research will be following the approval of the research activity by an approved Human Research and Ethics Committee. A patient information and consent form will be provided prior to your involvement in the research and will include information on how your Personal Information and Sensitive Information will be used, stored, and destroyed in accordance with our statutory obligations. 

We may collect Personal Information and Sensitive Information directly from individuals for clinical treatment purposes and/or for medical research, but information may also be collected from the following parties:

o      Parents or guardians of minors/persons with cognitive impairments;

o      Commonwealth and State agencies (e.g. medical records and results);

o      Insurers;

o      Registries (e.g. Death and Cancer registries);

o      Universities and government agencies;

o      Private medical research bodies;

o      Support groups and communities; and

o      Healthcare providers (e.g. general practitioners and specialists).

We will only collect information from third parties with your consent or where it is otherwise permitted under law. One such permitted circumstance where we would not seek your consent, is where it was unreasonable or impracticable to obtain your consent, and we need to collect your Personal Information from someone else to prevent a serious threat to your life or safety, or that of any other person.

The types of Personal Information and Sensitive Information we may collect for Health Services and/or medical research includes:

o      biographical information (e.g. names, titles, relationships and birthdates);

o      contact information (e.g. addresses, emails and telephone numbers);

o      financial information (e.g. billing/payment information, health insurance claims information etc);

o      gender identity;

o      sexual identity;

o      Medicare Number;

o      DVA number;

o      NDIS participant identification number;

o      Comcare case number;

o      third party reference number;

o      Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander origin;

o      ethnicity and any cultural information (e.g. languages spoken at home);

o      private health insurance details;

o      copies of referrals and/or reports from treating practitioners;

o      physical appearance information;

o      current physical and mental health;

o      physical/mental/social/reproduction/drug/travel/family history;

o      treatment history;

o      family history of diseases;

o      information from physical health and virus screens;

o      genetic information derived from DNA and RNA;

o      treating team contact information;

o      next of kin contact information;

o      occupational information; and

o      any other relevant health information.

We do not adopt a government‑related identifier (for example, a Medicare number) as our own identifier and we only use or disclose such identifiers as permitted by APP 9.

(b)          Why this information is collected

The purposes for collection of Personal Information and Sensitive Information for Health Services and/or medical research purposes, include for:

o      provision of Health Services including clinical treatments and diagnostics;

o      coordination of services via patient portals and/or digital applications;

o      undertaking clinical trials;

o      undertaking human research projects;

o      development of tissue and/or data banks; and

o      publication of research (as non-identifiable data).

(c)          Use and disclosure of this information

This information is used to:

o      help us provide you with an appropriate service;

o      evaluate and report on how well we are providing Health Services to you and the broader community;

o      record an individual’s involvement in clinical trials and other human research projects undertaken by us;

o      process the results of research and clinical trials; and

o      contact individuals about participation in future projects or trials.

Personal Information for medical research can be used by TBMH without prior consent in certain circumstances in accordance with the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research and any related guidance or publications. In such circumstances, the Personal Information will be de-identified and TBMH must satisfy itself that the research involving the use of Personal Information has been approved by a Human Research Ethics Committee, for the particular research purpose in accordance with the Guidelines.

Where it is impracticable to obtain consent, TBMH may collect, use, or disclose health information for research, the compilation or analysis of statistics, or the management, funding or monitoring of a health service in accordance with the section 95A Guidelines under the Privacy Act (“Section 95A Guidelines”), and only where a Human Research Ethics Committee has approved the proposal after weighing the public interest in the activity against the public interest in privacy. For example, this can arise in a large‑scale retrospective records review where contacting all affected individuals to obtain consent is genuinely impracticable and de‑identified data would not achieve the research aims, and the Human Research Ethics Committee has approved the activity under the section 95A Guidelines.

If TBMH handles agency‑held information under a Commonwealth contract, TBMH will follow the agency’s Human Research Ethics Committee approval and any conditions related to the section 95 Guidelines under the Privacy Act (“Section 95 Guidelines”) as specified for that project within the relevant Commonwealth contract. We will not otherwise disclose your Personal Information to any third parties without your consent unless this is permitted or required by law, or where an exception under the Privacy Act applies.

If any of your communications with us raises safety concerns, we will, subject to the relevant statutory obligation, try to contact you to check that you and/or others are safe. If necessary, we may need to pass on your contact information (if you have supplied it) to authorities who can help protect you and/or others, such as a crisis service or emergency services. Where possible we will work with you openly, letting you know if our concerns reach the point where we need to involve other services. Any such use or disclosure will be limited to what is reasonably necessary and may rely on an exception in the Privacy Act, such as a permitted general situation to lessen or prevent a serious threat to life, health, or safety.

We sometimes undertake and/or engage partners to conduct evaluation, research and reporting activities using information we provide. The information disclosed by TBMH to these partners for their evaluation, research and reporting purposes will be de-identified. We will take reasonable steps to ensure individuals are not reasonably identifiable in the relevant release context – for example, by removing direct identifiers and, where appropriate, altering or aggregating other data and applying controls in the data‑access environment.