Information about a patient’s medical and family health history is needed to provide accurate diagnosis and appropriate treatment. If you are coming to see me as an individual this information will generally be collected from yourself and from others with your consent. This might involve talking to other family members, staff from schools or other professionals involved in your care.
As a child and family psychiatrist, I often assess a whole family and in that case I would be collecting information sometimes individually and sometimes jointly about individuals within the family and also their observations of other family members.
Use & Disclosure
● Medical care requires the sharing of patient health information by members of a medical team involved in your care, Normally the results of an assessment and management plan would be communicated to the referring doctor and to ensure a quality and continuity of patient care, patient health information may be shared with other health care providers involved in your management from time to time. ● As part of professional development some information you provide may be discussed with colleagues similarly bound by confidentiality. I would ensure that no identifiable data is discussed. You may opt-out of this situation by letting me know. ● Some information about patients is also provided to Medicare for billing and medical rebate purposes. ● There may be occasions when there’s disclosure of patient information to professional bodies that I’m a member of for medical defence purposes. ● Also relevant patient health information would be revealed to lawyers and indemnity insurers for the purpose of defence of legal proceedings. ● It may be necessary to disclose some information for the purposes of quality assurance in clinical audit activities and for accreditation to professional medical bodies that I am a member of. ● There may be instances where my clinical records are subject to summons in legal proceedings but if appropriate you may claim for legal professional privilege. ● It is necessary for me to keep patients information after their last attendance for as long as required by law or as is prudent in regard to administrative requirements. ● Information may be disclosed if there is a serious threat to life, health or safety of an individual or to public health or safety or if information is requested regarding a missing person. ● Information won’t be disclosed to health professionals outside Australia without your permission.
Access
● A patient has a right to access their health information and this is straight forward if you have come to see me as an individual and you may ask to view the information or ask for a copy of part or whole of the record. There are circumstances in which access may be denied but in such an event I will give details for the reason. ● If you have consulted me as a member of a family and I’ve also assessed other members of the family, the situation is more complex as each family member would have to give informed consent to provide an individual access to the records however I could discuss with you details of the information you personally provided if informed consent from others involved wasn’t available. ● In some instances, young children may reveal confidential information to me about other family members and may not be able to give informed consent about whether their parent or guardian should have access to this information.
Psychotherapy Notes ● Psychotherapy notes are in a different category to the normal clinical record. The notes taken include the therapists impressions of the interactive doctor- patient relationship and working theories by the therapist that may not be accurate and so access to these notes might infringe on the therapists own privacy. Certainly if the notes can’t be viewed, past material can be discussed.
A charge may be payable where the practice incurs costs in providing access to records. If I can’t resolve your concerns the privacy commissioner can be contacted [email protected]
Openness This statement is an attempt to give information about our policy on management of personal information but it may not answer all your questions so please ask if you have in concerns about how we collect, hold, use and disclose any of your personal information.