1. Our Privacy Policy
The
- health services offered by Akkadian Health employees, third-party or contracted health professionals,
- the patient appointment booking, payment, data management and telehealth software and applications, and
- the website
(all referred to as "Services") provided by Akkadian Pty. Ltd., trading as Akkadian Health, may be referred to as "we", "our", and "us" in this Privacy Policy.
This Privacy Policy relates to the collection, use and handling of personal information you may supply to us through your use of our Services. The collection, use, and handling of personal information complies with the Australian Privacy Act 1988.
At Akkadian Health, we recognise the importance of protecting the privacy of information collected about users accessing our Services, in particular information that may identify an individual ("personal information").
By accessing our Services, you agree to this Privacy Policy.
This Privacy Policy is additional to any other terms and conditions applicable to our Services. We reserve the right to change this Privacy Policy from time to time without further notice to you. Any variations made will be updated on the website.
We welcome your comments and feedback via privacy@akkadianhealth.com.
2. Personal Information
Your personal information is collected only when you consent to it being collected and when it is knowingly and voluntarily submitted.
We collect your personal information to enable Akkadian Health employees and third-party health care professionals to provide medical services. This Policy protects your personal information from being dealt with in any way that is inconsistent with applicable privacy laws in Australia.
To provide the Services to you, we need your consent to collect your personal information. This information is primarily collected at the time of booking an appointment via an online booking form and/or online booking application, or by other forms of contact, such as by personal contact, mail, telephone, email, online forms, video teleconferencing.
3. Collecting Information
As part of registering with us to receive Services, we collect personal information about you in order for you to take full advantage of those Services. To do this it may be necessary for you to provide information to us as detailed below.
The personal information we collect is reasonably necessary for the purposes of conducting and improving our business and our Services. In providing the Services, some of the information we collect may be sensitive information including health information. This information may be collected through our Services, or by other forms of contact, such as by personal contact, mail, telephone, email, online forms, video teleconferencing, and secure messaging.
We may collect and store the clinical notes and / or clinical assessments of service providers who are registered with us, such as psychologists and other health providers (“Providers”) which relate to your consultation with the Provider if we are requested to do so by the Provider.
The personal information we collect may include, but is not limited to, your title, full name, email address, residential and postal address, telephone numbers, gender, date of birth, marital status, next of kin details, your general practitioner’s name and contact details, your occupation and employment status, and transactional information such as consultation dates, times and methods of payment. We may also collect health and government-related identifiers where relevant, including Medicare card details, Department of Veterans’ Affairs file number, and medical information provided to us as part of a referral or other clinical documentation from your treating health providers, such as your referring General Practitioner.
We only collect personal information about you from you to maintain the accuracy of that information, and only where it is reasonable and necessary for our Services.
Cookies: Cookies are files with a small amount of data. We may use cookies to collect information, to provide you with a better experience in our provision of our Services to you, to assist with the diagnosis of problems or support issues with our Services, and to understand the use of our Services. These cookies are a way of monitoring single user access without storing or retaining any personal information. Any aggregate, non-personal information is collated (for example, via Google Analytics) and is made available to us to assist in analysing the usage of our Services.
4. Credit Card Details
Credit Card details are used to process payments for the Services, which may include assessment and psychiatry Services. Your credit card may be charged with our fee to enable you to secure an appointment for our Services. Your credit card may be charged before or after the provision of Services, depending on the nature of the Services. We will advise you beforehand when Services will be charged and will obtain your prior consent to do so.
We use a third-party provider, Southern Payment Systems Pty Ltd (ABN: 46 154 451 582, trading as PIN Payments), to process any of your credit card payments. For partial or split payments over time, we use the PayPal services provided by PayPal Australia Pty Limited (ABN: 93 111 195 389) which holds an Australian Financial Services Licence number 304962.
5. Use of Information
Personal information is used only for the purpose for which it is submitted. Copies of correspondence, that may contain personal information, are stored as archives for record-keeping and back-up purposes only.
Sometimes a patient referral will be sent to us by email. Emails are stored by our email hosting provider external to us, and are stored in accordance with Google Business services security protocols and policies.
From time to time, we may contact you with information about our Services, updates, or promotional offers.
6. Disclosure
Personal information may be disclosed in special situations where we have reason to believe that doing so is necessary to identify, contact or bring legal action against anyone damaging, injuring, or interfering (intentionally or unintentionally) with our rights or property, users, or anyone else who could be harmed by such activities. Also, we may disclose personal information when the law requires such disclosure, or because we reasonably believe that you may harm yourself, someone else, or our property.
Disclosure of personal information may be to our providers and affiliates. We may engage third parties to provide you with Services on our behalf. In that circumstance, we may disclose your personal information to those third parties in order to meet your request for our Services. We disclose your personal information only with your express consent.
Other than for the above, we will not use or disclose your personal information without your express consent.
Uploading or transmitting data and including your personal information may be handled by third parties. In such circumstances, we are not responsible for that uploading and transmission and you are responsible for your disclosure of your personal information.
7. Security
We strive to ensure the security, integrity and privacy of personal information submitted to us, and we review and update our security measures in light of current technologies. Unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be totally secure.
We will endeavour to take all reasonable steps to protect the personal information you may transmit to us or which we hold about you pursuant to our Services. Once we do receive your transmission, we will also make our best efforts to ensure its security on our systems and to keep this information accurate and up to date.
Our employees and the contractors who provide services related to our information systems are obliged to respect the confidentiality of any personal information held by us. However, we will not be held responsible for events arising from unauthorised access to your personal information.
8. Accessing and updating your personal information
If you wish to access or update your personal information, please contact us, and provide the necessary details. To protect your privacy, we may require you to verify your identity before we process your request. Once verified, we will take reasonable steps to update or amend your personal information as requested. These actions will be carried out by our staff, who are bound by confidentiality obligations. We reserve the right to refuse access to or modification of personal information where we are unable to verify an individual’s identity or where the request relates to information that the individual is not authorised to access.
9. Breach
As required under the Privacy Act 1988, we will notify you and the Australian Information Commissioner if we suspect a breach relating to your personal information has occurred and there is a real risk of serious harm to you because of the breach.
10. External Links
We may provide links to third party websites. These linked sites are not under our control, and we cannot accept responsibility for the conduct of companies linked to our website or Services. Before disclosing your personal information on any other website or product, we advise you to examine the terms and conditions of using that website or product and its privacy statement.
11. Applicable Law
These Services are governed and construed according to the laws of the State of South Australia. By using our Website and/or our Services you agree to submit to the jurisdiction of the courts of South Australia.
12. Problems or Questions
If we become aware of any ongoing concerns or problems with our Services, we will take these issues seriously and work to address these concerns.
If you have any concerns relating to our collection, use or disclosure of personal information, or about how we manage your personal information, you may write to our Privacy Officer at privacy@akkadianhealth.com. Privacy complaints will be handled in confidence, and we will reasonably endeavour to provide a response within 14 days of receipt.
For general complaints about our services, staff, or other matters not related to privacy, please follow our standard Complaints Management process, which can be found in our separate Complaints Policy.
If you are not satisfied with our response, or for more information about privacy issues in Australia and protecting your privacy, visit the Office of the Australian Privacy Commissioner's web site; http://www.oaic.gov.au/.
If have any further queries relating to this Privacy Policy, or you have a problem or complaint with the collection or use of your data, please contact our Privacy Officer: privacy@akkadianhealth.com