Privacy Policy  

Protecting your privacy

Navy Health Ltd is committed to protecting your privacy. We are required by law to protect personal and confidential information such as information relating to your health and other personal details. We comply with all Federal and Victorian legislation relating to confidentiality and privacy, including, where relevant, the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), and the Health Records Act 2001 (Vic).

This statement sets out policies for the management of information

We cannot use or disclose information of a personal nature, except to the extent that this is required, authorised or permitted under law. All our staff are required to be trained and understand their obligations under the laws relating to maintaining your privacy.

We will only collect health information that is necessary for us to perform our functions. We will always try to do so in a fair, lawful and non intrusive way. Wherever possible, we will collect information directly from you rather than from third parties. We will do our best to tell you if we collect information about you from a third party.

When we collect information from you we will tell you why we are collecting it, any law that requires it to be collected, the organisations or type of organisations to whom we usually would disclose it and the consequences for you if the information is not provided. We try to set this information out in any form in which we ask for health information to be provided.

Generally, we collect and use your information for the purpose of providing health benefits to you. We may also use your information for other purposes which are permitted under the privacy laws. Examples of when we are allowed to use or disclose information about you include: to a court in compliance with a summons or court order. Aside from where the law specifically allows us to use or disclose health information, we do not use or disclose such information for purposes which are unrelated to the purposes for which we collected the information, without your consent.

We do everything we can to make sure that the information we hold about you is accurate, complete and up to date. We will not keep information longer than we need to. From time to time we conduct audits of our records and databases to ensure that the information we hold is accurate and up to date.

Access to our record keeping and computer systems is controlled and monitored. Our staff and authorised external users only have access to systems that their duties require. We have comprehensive auditing procedures to prevent and detect unauthorised access and fraud. Our physical or paper records are securely stored and can be accessed only by authorised personnel. Our computer systems uniquely identify individual users to ensure that access is appropriately authorised. All transactions involving information of a personal nature that can be audited are traceable to an individual Navy Health Ltd staff member.

Any individual or organisation (such as an outside service contractor), who is seeking access to health information held by Navy Health Ltd is required to sign a confidentiality agreement. When entering into an agreement, the recipient agrees that the information will only be used and disclosed in accordance with the terms and conditions outlined in the agreement. However, if you authorise us in writing to release the health information to another individual or organisation, then a confidentiality agreement is not required.

If you ask us, we will give you access to information we hold about you. However, there are some exceptions to this. For example, we do not have to give you access to health information we hold about you where doing so would unreasonably disclose information relating to others or where the information would otherwise be exempt from disclosure by law.

We may from time to time transfer health information about you to organisations outside Victoria for the purpose of the provision of care or treatment to you. We will only do this where you consent, where we believe that the recipient organisation is subject to binding privacy obligations that are substantially similar to the ones under which we operate, or where it is in your interests for us to do so (and it is impracticable to obtain your consent, and if we were able to ask, you would be likely to give consent).

We ensure that any suspected infringements of privacy are thoroughly investigated. We have implemented fraud prevention strategies to identify procedural and systems weaknesses and we continually review these strategies. Disciplinary action is taken in cases where investigations or suspected infringements of privacy are proven.

If you:

  • want to have access to health information we hold about you;
  • believe information we hold about you is inaccurate and would like to request that it be amended;
  • want to know more about the type of information we hold, for what purposes and how we deal with that information; or
  • have concerns that we may have infringed your privacy rights,

you should contact:

Privacy Officer
Navy Health Ltd
PO Box 172
Box Hill Vic 3128
Call 1300 306 289 or
email query@navyhealth.com.au