Privacy policy

1. Policy statement and principles

   Compassion Rehabilitation is committed to safeguarding the personal information of participant and any other associated individuals, to comply with our obligations under the Privacy Act 1988 (Commonwealth), NDIS and other relevant State legislation. Compassion Rehabilitation acknowledges and understands the importance of privacy. We collect, use, store and disclose personal information in the course of providing allied health services to participants under aged care and National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). You, by accepting our services, entering into agreements or contracts with us, or interacting with our website, have given your consent to your personal information being collected, stored and used in accordance with this policy.

2. The Privacy Act 1988

   The Privacy Act 1988 (Commonwealth) is an Australian law which regulates the handling of personal information about individuals. This includes the collection, use, storage and disclose of personal information. As an individual, the Privacy Act gives you greater control over the way that your personal information is handled.

   Employee information is, generally excluded from the ambit of the Privacy Act to the extent they are dealing with an employee’s record in a manner that is directly related to the employment relationship.

3. What personal information do we collect and hold?

   Personal information is information or an opinion about an identified person, or someone who is reasonably identifiable, whether or not the information or opinion is true and whether the information or opinion is recorded in a material form or not.

   The types of personal information we may collect and hold about you include but not limited to name, address, date of birth, gender, contact details, next of kin, NDIS number, medical history, social history, financial affairs (including employment) and NDIS plan.

4. How do we collect and hold personal information?

   We collect personal information about you in several ways, including but not limited to the following:

   • you directly
   • someone who has responsibility for you (your family member, carer or guardian)
   • information collected by workers of Compassion Rehabilitation
   • information from third party health or service providers to Compassion Rehabilitation
   • information collected through website in the form of online enquiries or requests

   We will create a unique digital record for you and update your records whenever you are a recipient of our allied health services.

   A small data file called a 'cookie' is stored on your computer or mobile device by our server. We use cookies to maintain user sessions and to generate statistics about the number of people that visit our websites. Generally, this information will not identify you and we do not link it back to your identity or other information that you have provided to us.

   We take reasonable steps to protect personal records we hold from misuse, interference, loss, unauthorised access, modification and disclosure.

   However, we are not responsible for the privacy practices of third party websites or platforms used or referenced by Compassion Rehabilitation and encourage you to examine their privacy policies and exercise your own discretion. Such third party websites or platforms includes but not limited to Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and WhatsApp.

5. Why do we need your personal information and what do we do with it?

   Duty of care

   We collect, maintain, use and disclose personal information about you in order to assist our allied health team to provide you with appropriate care, treatment and services.

   Operating our business

   We use your personal information as necessary to manage our administration, including storage of data, management of accounts and payment for the services provided to you.

   Specifically, we will use and where necessary disclose your personal information:

   • to obtain payment from you, your plan manager, NDIA or from any organisation responsible for payment
   • if the circumstances require, we may disclose your personal information to our auditor, insurer or internally amongst the workers
   • to manage and store your personal information in a secure fashion, including management and storage by third parties, such as cloud service providers with contractual relationship with Compassion Rehabilitation or associated entities
   • for data entry and data analytics purposes, and
   • to entities within the Compassion Rehabilitation corporate group for administrative and information management purposes. Any such disclosures are subject to strict conditions relating to confidentiality and data security

   We may use your personal information to communicate with you, including to:

   • give you important information (including by SMS or email) about the products and services offered by us
   • respond to your online enquiries or process requests for appointments
   • advertise to you particular products and services that may be of interest to you, and
   • send you appointment reminders (including by SMS or email) in relation to obtaining services from us. This enables us to contact you, for example, to make follow-up appointments to discuss results

   Teaching and research

   We may use your personal information for internal teaching purposes or to monitor, evaluate, plan and improve our services to our participants. We will only use de-identified information for these purposes.

   We may use your personal information to provide third parties with de-identified health information. Please notify us, should you, at any time, wish to withdraw your consent for your personal information to be part of the de-identified information database.

   Other disclosures

   We may be required by law to disclose your personal information without your consent.

6. Storage of your personal information

   We take reasonable steps and implement reasonable safeguards, to ensure the protection of the personal information that we hold. All participant information is handled securely and in accordance with professional duties of confidentiality.

   We must retain information about a participant for at least 7 years from the date the record is made.

7. What happens if we do not collect your personal information?

   If you do not provide us with all the personal information we request, we may not be able to provide services to you. We only collect as much personal information from you as our allied health team need to provide you with services and to allow us to collect payment for these services.

8. Can you access your personal information we hold?

   You may request access to the personal information we hold about you. You can also request that corrections be made to it. We will respond to your request within a reasonable time.

   There are some circumstances where we are not required to give you access to or correct your personal information. We will normally give you a written notice setting out our reasons for not complying with your request and informing you of how you can complain about our refusal.

   There is no fee for requesting access to your personal information or for us to make corrections. However, we will charge a fee for our costs involved in collating and providing you with access to any personal information. That fee is payable before access is given.

9. What to do if you would like to make a complaint about a breach of the Australian Privacy Principles

   If you have any concerns about how we handle your personal information or you wish to make a complaint on the basis that we have breached the Australian Privacy Principles prescribed by the Privacy Act 1988 (Commonwealth) - please complete an online complaint form from our website, email or talk to any of our service co-ordinator on 0492 942 406.

This privacy policy may change from time to time.