What is the medical confidentiality policy?
Your medical record is confidential. This practice maintains security of personal health information at all times and ensures that this information is only available to authorised staff members. Consistent with our commitment to quality care, this practice has developed a policy to protect patient privacy in compliance with privacy legislation.
Our policy informs you:
- We need your consent to collect information
- Why we need to collect your information
- We need your consent to collect information about you
- How your information will be used by us and to whom we may need to disclose it
- You may request access to the information we hold about you
- You may discuss with us any concerns you have about how we handle your information
There are exceptions to these rules. If a patient provides written signed consent to allow us to release information to another person or party then this can be done. Also by law, a doctor is bound to break confidentiality if a patient is presenting as a harm to themselves, or as a harm to others, or if a child is involved.
Can I get my test results over the phone?
We are unable to provide results over the phone for two reasons. Firstly, it is difficult to tell who is on the phone, so we have no way of ensuring confidentiality. Secondly, giving a positive result over the phone does not allow for appropriate counselling or management and so we prefer to give results in person.
All patients will be required to make an appointment with the doctor to receive their test results.