Dr. Myran Ponnam-Palam

Just as we have the utmost concern for your health and helping you start a family, our team also respect your privacy and personal information.
Our relationship is based on trust and confidentiality so we endeavour to handle your personal information in accordance to Australian Government Privacy Policy standards, the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), and the Australian Privacy Principles.
From time to time our administration staff, doctors, nurses, scientists and counsellors may need to access your personal health information to make sure we provide the most appropriate care and fertility treatment.

At anytime you are entitled to know:

• What personal information we hold about you
• How you can access the information we hold about you
• Why we hold the information we have about you
• To whom we may disclose the information we have about you and;
• When we need your consent from you to hold this information.
• This Policy explains these details. You can discuss any issue relating to the privacy of your information with a member of our friendly administration team, at any time during business hours.

We collect information that helps us provide the level of advice, care and management you need, or where there is a legal requirement for collection. This information may include:

• Your contact details
• Date of birth
• Relationship status
• Your medical history
• Your families medical history
• Symptoms
• Diagnosis and recommended treatment
• Ethnicity
• Medicare and/or private health fund details
• Billing or account details, and
• Criminal records check
• Child protection order check. 

To ensure we provide you with the most appropriate care and treatment, our staff may collect, hold, use and disclose your personal information for any of the following purposes:

• Communicating with referring and other medical practitioners, hospitals or health providers
• Sharing your information within the treatment team
• Referring specimens and samples to laboratories for analysis
• Billing and accounts
• Medicare and private health insurance claims
• Day to day practice management including follow up, quality, practice accreditation and ensuring our records are up to date
• Disclosure to our service providers as necessary for your treatment, our management and administrative purposes
• Legal disclosure of necessary items to third parties
• Complaints handling
• Insurance purposes
• Providing information if required to the  Registrar of Births, Death and Marriages in relation to each donor treatment in compliance with regulatory requirements
• Providing sample of case-notes for confidential review as part of annual Code of Practice audits by the national Reproductive Technology Accreditation Committee (RTAC), or its agents, in compliance with regulatory requirements
• Submitting a summary as required to the Australia and New Zealand Assisted Reproduction Database (ANZARD) of every treatment we perform under regulations in relation to government and statutory bodies. In all these cases we remove any information that personally identifies you.
• For data analysis and research purposes we may also use non-identifying information from your medical file.

To the best of our ability we will ensure the personal information we collect, hold or disclose is:

• Accurate
• Complete
• Up-to-date and;
• Relevant to the functions and services we provide.

In most cases, you will be able to access your personal information we hold about you, in part, full, or you can ask us to provide it to a third party.

In most cases please make this request in writing.

If your personal details or situation has changed making any of the personal information we hold about you is inaccurate or incomplete, please let us know. We will be happy to make updates and corrections to your records.

If you have any concerns about your treatment or the information we hold about you, please discuss them with our administration team.

Privacy Commissioner
Office of the Australian Information Commissioner
Level 8, Piccadilly Tower 133 Castlereagh Street Sydney NSW 2000
GPO Box 5218 Sydney NSW 1042
Privacy hotline 1300 363 992 Website www.privacy.gov.au 
or

Office of the Health Services Commissioner
Level 30 570 Bourke Street Melbourne VIC 3000
T: (03) 8601 5200 Website www.health.vic.gov.au/hsc/