Privacy Policy

Our website address is: https://therapymatters.com.au

What is this policy about?

Therapy Matters recognises the importance of your privacy and understands your concerns about the security of your personal information. We are committed to protecting any personal information that we hold.

This policy explains how we manage personal information, what kinds of personal information we hold, why we hold it, and how we collect, store and handle it. It also outlines your rights in relation to the personal information we hold.

As a private health business, we are bound by the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (including the Australian Privacy Principles). This Policy is intended to reflect our obligations under these Privacy Laws.

Hard copies of this policy are available complimentary from our reception area or in a PDF copy, by way of email to our Privacy Officer.

When we refer to “clients” below, we mean both former and current clients, as well as people who make inquiries about our products and services (i.e. potential clients). When we refer to “staff” below, we mean both former and current staff as well as people who apply or make inquiries about prospective job vacancies.

What kinds of personal information do we collect and hold?

“Personal information” includes a broad range of information, or an opinion that could identify an individual. We collect and hold a range of personal information in connection with carrying out our business and functions as an allied health provider. The kinds of personal information that we collect and hold about you will depend upon the nature of our relationship with you.

Our clients

To provide evidence-based speech pathology services to our clients, we need to know personal information about them and others. We require this information to assist the speech pathologist to diagnose and treat clients including:

• parent or carer’s name;
• child’s name;
• child’s date of birth;
• address;
• phone number;
• medicare number;
• NDIS Plan number and details;
• information about your child’s health, developmental and family history;
• information about your child’s difficulties and disabilities; and
• financial information concerning the ability of clients to pay for our products and services.
• For sensitive information – such as information about your child’s health that is reasonably necessary for us to provide you with services or products – we will seek your consent.

Our employees, contractors and job applicants

We typically collect and hold the following kinds of personal information about employees, contractors and job applicants:

• name and contact details;
• identity documents;
• information contained in resumes;
• educational details, academic transcripts, employment history, skills and background checks;
• references from past employers and referees;
• information collected during the interview or application process; and
• personal information required to make payments, such as bank account details.

We may also collect sensitive information contained within the sources set out above, such as membership of a professional association, professional insurances, child protection & NDIS worker checks, training certificates and health information.

We collect personal information on these individuals to establish and maintain records for the employment and recruitment of staff and prospective applicants for our vacant positions.

Website users, online contacts, service providers, suppliers and attendees at workshops

The amount and type of information we collect from you when you use of our website or contact us online will depend upon your use of the facilities and services available through our website or otherwise available online. However, the only personal information which we collect about you when you use our website or contact us online is what you tell us about yourself, such as when you complete an online subscription form to our newsletters, when you accept an invitation to attend a seminar or function, or complete one of our online forms, including through our marketing campaigns, or information you provide to us when you send us an email.

The kinds of personal information that we may collect through our website, online, in emails or when you register to, or attend a function include:

• your name, contact details, organisation and job title.

We may also collect and hold the following sensitive information about you when you attend a catered workshop: health information (e.g. for catering purposes such as food allergies or dietary needs).

We will also collect personal information about you if you provide your personal information to us in person or contact us through social media (such as LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook).

How do we collect personal information?

We collect personal information by telephone (e.g. when you first call us to book an appointment for yourself or your child), via our website, through our client questionnaires, consent forms and service agreements (which are usually filled in by a client or carer as part of our intake process), by written letters, reports and other documents (e.g. through doctors reports you provide to us), through emails, SMS and other forms of electronic communication, and in interviews and other interactions in our clinic (including face-to-face interviews and interviews conducted electronically, such as by way of Zoom).

Who do we collect personal information from?

We collect personal information from individuals, clients or someone authorised to act on a client’s behalf (e.g. their parents, carers or guardians). Wherever practicable, we will ask for the information directly. However, we may need to contact others when relevant to a client’s circumstances (e.g. when working with schools and other medical and allied health providers). In these cases, we will seek your consent and make you aware of the fact that we have reach out to and that we have collected this information and the circumstances of the collection.

When you give us information about other people, we rely on you to have obtained their prior consent and on you to tell them of the types of third parties we may provide the information to and why.

Why do we collect personal information?

We collect personal information to deliver, review and improve the services that we provide. Generally, these services and products relate to speech pathology. If we didn’t collect this information, we wouldn’t be able to carry out of business or provide our services to you in accordance with the standards required by law and the Speech Pathology Australia Code of Ethics. If you do not provide the personal information that we request, we would not be able to carry out our business and provide our services to you.

More specifically, we need personal information (including health information) to provide clients with speech pathology services and products related to their communication difficulties. We also need this information:

• for administrative purposes of managing our business;
• when necessary, to fulfil our obligations under law, regulation and/or Speech Pathology Australia’s Code of Ethics;
• for billing management (either directly or through Medicare, Private Health or the NDIS);
• to liaise with your health fund, Medicare or the Department of Veteran’s Affairs and where required provide information to your health fund, Medicare or the Department of Veteran’s Affairs to verify treatment provided to you
• discussions between speech pathologists and others working at our clinic (including other speech pathologists, therapy assistants. Keyworker and our client care team) related to the care of clients;
• discussions and other communications with your doctors, other health professionals, and education professionals in relation to your care;
• activities such as quality assurance processes, accreditation, audits, risk and claims management, patient satisfaction surveys and staff education and training;
• invoicing, billing and account management; and
• the purpose of sending you standard reminders, for example for appointments and follow-up care, by text message or email to the number or address which you have provided to us.

From time to time, we may use personal information (but not sensitive health information) to provide you with news or offers about our products or services that may be of interest to you. These products and services will be related to our speech pathology business described above and will be products and services that we believe will be relevant to you. You have a right, at any time, to tell us that you don’t want to receive this type of material.

Can people access our products and services anonymously?

No. Due to the nature of our services and products, we cannot offer them to people who wish to be anonymous, wish to use a pseudonym or who do not provide us with enough information to properly identify them for the purposes of providing services and products.

Who will see or have access to your personal information?

Your information may be seen or used by people working for or on behalf of Therapy Matters and other service providers that you provide consent for information sharing with including (without limitation):

• our director;
• our speech pathologists;
• our therapy assistants;
• our child & family keyworker;
• our administrative staff;
• doctors, other health professionals, and education professionals;
• our third-party professional advisors and service providers, including (without limitation) our lawyers, book-keepers, accountants, and IT service providers (including software-as-a-service provider); and
• medicare, private health insurance providers and the NDIS.

We will not rent, sell, trade or otherwise disclose to any other third parties any personal information about you without your consent, or unless we are required by law (including pursuant to a court or tribunal order), or where a permitted general situation (including a permitted health situation) exists within the meaning of the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), or if we reasonably believe disclosure is necessary for enforcement-related activities.

How we hold personal information?

We know that you are concerned about your personal information – especially your health information. We will use reasonable endeavours to prevent unauthorised access to, modification of, disclosure, misuse or loss of that information as required by law.

We use technologies and processes such as access control procedures, network firewalls, encryption and physical security to protect your privacy. Therapy Matters will destroy or permanently de-identify any of your information which is in its possession or control and which is no longer needed for the purpose for which it was collected provided Therapy Matters is not required under an Australian law or court/tribunal or otherwise to retain the information.

If we no longer need personal information about you for any purpose described above, then we will take reasonable steps to destroy the information or to ensure that such information is de-identified unless we are obliged to retain the information under another Health Records law.

Our directors and staff have reviewed the requirements of the Privacy Laws and our third-party service providers have been made aware that they are required to comply with the requirements of the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).

We have data protection measures in place (including password-locked computers and multifactor authentication for passwords) when we store personal information electronically. Our hard copy health records are stored in a locked filing cabinet on site accessible only to authorised staff.

Access to your personal information

We take reasonable steps to ensure that personal information we collect about or from you is accurate, complete, up-to-date and relevant whenever it is used, collected or disclosed. Subject to the recognised exceptions to access for organisations contained in the Australian Privacy Principles (APP12.3), you have a right to access you information if you wish (subject to any privilege or legal restrictions); and, if it is reasonable and practicable to do so, we will give you access to the information in the manner requested by you. By law, we may charge you a reasonable fee to cover the cost of retrieving and processing the information.

If you believe personal information that we hold about you is inaccurate, out-of-date, incomplete or misleading, we will, on receipt of your request, take steps that are reasonable in the circumstances to correct the information.

How we handle your personal information when you visit our website?

This section of our Privacy Policy explains how we handle your personal information which is collected from our website: www.therapymatters.com.au. This Privacy Policy applies to your use of our website and the use of any of the facilities on our website.

When you use our website, we do not attempt to identify you as an individual user and we will not collect personal information about you unless you specifically provide this to us. Sometimes, we may collect your personal information if you choose to provide this to us via an online form or by email, for example, if you:

• submit a general enquiry via our contact us page;
• register to receive Newsletters; or
• send a written complaint or enquiry to our Privacy Officer.

When you use our website, our Internet Service Provider (ISP) may record and log for statistical purposes the following information about your visit:

• your computer address;
• your top level name (for example, .com.,gov., .org, .au etc.);
• the date and time of your visit;
• the pages and documents you access during your visit; and
• the browser you are using.

Our web-site management agent may use statistical data collected by our ISP to evaluate the effectiveness of our web-site.

Cookies. A “cookie” is a device that allows our server to identify and interact more effectively with your computer. Cookies do not identify individual users, but they do identify your ISP and your browser type. This website uses temporary cookies. This means that upon closing your browser, the temporary cookie assigned to you will be destroyed and no personal information is maintained which will identify you at a later date. Personal information such as your email address is not collected unless you provide it to us. We do not disclose domain names or aggregate information to third parties other than agents who assist us with this website and who are under obligations of confidentiality. You may be able to configure your browser to accept or reject all cookies and to notify you when a cookie is used. We suggest that you refer to your browser instructions or help screens to learn more about these functions. However, please note that if you configure your browser so as not to receive any cookies, a certain level of functionality of the Therapy Matters website and other websites may be lost.

Links to third party websites We may create links to third party websites. We are not responsible for the content or privacy practices employed by websites that are linked from our website.

Use and disclosure. We will use any personal information collected via our website in accordance with our privacy policy.

How we handle your personal information when you visit our social networking sites?

We use social networking services such as Facebook, X, YouTube, Instagram and Linked in to talk with the public and our staff. When you talk with us using these services we may collect your personal information to communicate with you and the public.

The social networking service will also handle your personal information for its own purposes. These services have their own privacy policies. You can access the privacy policies for these services on their websites.

What about direct marketing?

If you are a client or have otherwise expressed interest and provided us with your contact details, we may send emails to you with information about our speech pathology services (such as alerts and newsletters) and marketing our services (such as workshop or event invitations).

We may use an “email management system” to automate the management and dispatch of these emails. The system operates by inserting tracking codes in the emails that we send to you. The tracking code allows us to collect personal information about you, such as whether you received and opened an email, and whether you clicked through to any links to our website. The personal information that the email management system collects and holds about you is used by us to:

• ensure that you only receive correspondence that you have informed us that you wish to receive;
• insert your personal information into our communications with you;
• determine whether the information that we send to you is suitable for your interests, information needs and profile;
• ensure that the email address that you have provided us is still operational;
• determine whether emails that we send to you are received by you;
• update a request that you make to us to unsubscribe from a publication that we send to you;
• review the effectiveness and relevance of our emails to you by collecting other statistical information.

If you do not wish for us to send you such emails, please let us know by contacting our Privacy Officer at the details below. You can also unsubscribe from our email notifications by clicking on the “Unsubscribe” button at the bottom of our email notifications and following the prompts or by emailing us by clicking the ‘Contact Us’ button.

What happens if personal information is disclosed outside Australia

Given the increasing globalisation of electronic information systems and the businesses of service providers, it is likely that personal information may be disclosed to a person or entity outside Australia (e.g. to a third-party service provider managed outside Australia). For the same reason, it is not practicable to specify the countries in which such recipients may be located.

If your personal information is disclosed by us to an overseas recipient (e.g. to an IT-service provider), we will take reasonable steps in the circumstances to ensure the overseas recipient does not breach the Australian Privacy Principles in relation to the information.

Complaints

If you believe your privacy has been prejudiced by something we have done or failed to do, you have a legal right to lodge a complaint.

Our Privacy Officer is Tania Teitzel (Director), who can be contacted by phone, email and in writing to Therapy Matters with details below.

We will respond to complaints within a reasonable period of time (usually 30 days). We will promptly review your complaint and provide a response to you.

Privacy Officer

If you would like more information about the way we manage personal information, would like to request access to or correction of personal information that we hold about you, or wish to make a complaint, please contact our Privacy Officer by either:

Email: Attention “Privacy Officer” info@therapymatters.com.au

Post: Attention “Privacy Officer” Suite 6, 43 Tallebudgera Creek Road West Burleigh Q 4220

Telephone: (07) 55207860

Changes to our privacy policy

From time to time it may be necessary for us to review and revise our Privacy Policy. We may notify you about changes to this Privacy Policy by posting an updated version on our website. We encourage to your check our website from time to time to ensure you are familiar with our latest Privacy Policy.

Want more information?

If you have any questions about this policy, or have any concerns about the personal information you or others have given us about you, please contact us.

More information on the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) can be found on the website of the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.

Last updated: 16th July, 2024