Privacy Policy

In the course of our business, Western Health may collect information about you to perform our functions and activities as a health service and residential aged care service provider.

The types of information and documents containing your information we collect will vary depending on the nature of our interaction with you and may include:

• Identifying and contact information (such as name, date of birth, address, email address and telephone phone number);
• Next of kin or preferred contact person;
• Your medical history, information about your health condition, treatment, images of diagnostic scans, test results, immunisation history statements and COVID-19 vaccination certificates, both past and present;
• Parenting orders, powers of attorney, medical treatment decision maker nominations and advanced care directives;
• Records of communication including complaints, requests and queries;
• Photographs;
• Credit card and payment details;
• Criminal histories and clearances, including through police record checks and working with children checks;
• ethnic background;
• Lifestyle history and family history;
• Qualifications, education, professional registrations and employment history;
• Commonwealth and Victorian government identifiers (such as Medicare numbers, individual healthcare identifiers, pension or Veterans' Affairs numbers and drivers licence numbers);
• Private health insurer membership details;
• Responses provided by you to surveys issued by us or by third party service providers on our behalf;
• Referrals to us from other health services or health service providers; and
• Closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage in public areas.

Western Health may collect information about you from a range of sources including:

• Patients, next-of-kin, carers, family members and guardians in the course of, or in anticipation of, providing health services to patients;
• Healthcare professionals;
• Job applicants, past and present board members, employees and contractors of Western Health;
• Volunteers and students assisting Western Health in the provision of health services;
• Victorian Government agencies, authorities and departments;
• Commonwealth Government agencies, authorities and departments, such as Services Australia that maintains the national register where your vaccinations are recorded;
• Victoria Police;
• Visitors to our premises; and
• Third parties providing services to Western Health.

Western Health will only collect information about you by lawful and fair means and not in an unreasonably intrusive manner. 

Depending on the nature of your interaction with Western Health, we may collect your information in a number of ways including directly from you, through our website, admission forms, correspondence (written and verbal), from CCTV cameras in operation, at our acute hospitals, day hospitals, community health centres and residential aged care services. We may also collect your information from a range of sources such as those listed in the section above.
 

If you are a patient, Western Health typically collects your information directly from you.  If you do not have the capacity to provide information to us, we may collect your information from another party including your emergency contact or next-of-kin/guardian/carer and first responders (including police and paramedics).  We may also collect your personal information from third parties such as your general practitioner (GP), external specialist clinicians, other treating health service providers, your aged care or other care facility, or from health service providers who partner with us to provide health services. 
 

If you are a healthcare professional, Western Health typically collects your information directly from you or from your patient. 
 

If you are a contractor of Western Health, we typically collect your information directly from you or from third parties such as a nursing agency or recruitment agency.
 

If you are a student, we typically collect your information directly from you or from your educational institution.
 

If you are a volunteer or a visitor, we typically collect your information directly from you.
 

If you are a third-party service provider, we typically collect your information directly from you or the organisation who employs or engages you.
 

If you are an employee, we typically collect your information from you and government agencies that hold information required to be collected by us for your commencement or ongoing employment such as mandatory vaccinations, police checks and working with children checks.
 

If you are have applied for a position with Western Health, we typically collect your information directly from you or from a third party recruitment agency engaged by us for the recruitment process. We do not contact your nominated referees or collect any confidential external information without your prior consent.

Western Health collects, holds, uses and discloses information for a range of purposes including the following:

• To provide you, or your patient, with health services including hospital, diagnostic imaging, outpatient and residential aged care services;
• To fulfil our clinical obligations;
• To invoice and process any fees payable in relation to services rendered;
• To manage our relationship with you and to contact you for follow up purposes, including to send you reminders and information about upcoming appointments/admissions;
• To verify and update personal information held by us;
• To perform business functions as an employer;
• To recruit personnel;
• To assess or manage risk of family violence;
• To engage third party service providers;
• To review, develop and improve our services including by asking patients to participate in a patient survey and quality improvement activities;
• To undertake quality assurance, audits (clinical and non-clinical), accreditation, service planning, risk assessment and management and claims investigation and management;
• To train and educate our staff and students;
• To assist with administration, planning, financial or management purposes;
• To recruit participants for clinical trials and research;
• To comply with legal or regulatory obligations; and
• For other purposes required or authorised by or under law, including purposes for which you have provided your consent.
• To provide updates to past patients about events, campaigns and fundraising activities.
   

Our range of services and our functions and activities may change from time to time.
 

If you provide your email address, telephone and/or mobile phone number, Western Health will use your email address, telephone and/or mobile phone number to contact you (including by telephone call, SMS or email) for any of these purposes.

Western Health may disclose your information to other persons or organisations including to:

• Healthcare providers including:
  • Healthcare providers who provide healthcare services to and at Western Health sites;
  • Your referring/treating healthcare providers; and
  • Healthcare providers we may refer you to for further healthcare services (including allied professionals, diagnostic imaging service providers and pathology service providers);
• Victoria Police to lessen a serious threat to you or others if we reasonably consider that disclosure is necessary or warranted;
• Other agencies to meet our obligations under the Family Violence Sharing Scheme and Child Information Sharing Scheme;
• The organisation that is funding the provision of our services to you such as government organisations (including Medicare Australia, TAC, WorkCover and Department of Veterans' Affairs) and private health insurers;
• Other persons or organisations engaged by Western Health to assist us in carrying out the above purposes such as telehealth platform providers, data storage providers, IT support providers, auditors, insurers, recruitment agencies and professional advisors;
• Regulatory authorities and Commonwealth and Victorian government agencies such as Medicare Australia, Department of Veterans' Affairs, the Inspector-General of Aged Care, WorkCover and TAC;
• Courts, tribunals, safety and quality bodies and law enforcement agencies (such as providing CCTV recordings to Victoria Police);
• Third parties for the purposes of reviewing the quality of services delivered and service improvement (de-identified);
• Governmental departments or agencies to disclose certain information where we are required to do so by law about patients who have specific conditions, or to maintain a health or disease register where we are required to do so by law; and
• Your family and/or emergency contact or next-of-kin/guardian/carer (unless you have requested that we do not do so).
• The Western Health Foundation for the purposes of providing updates to past patients about events, campaigns and fundraising activities.
• To the operator of an ambulance service such as Ambulance Victoria, including to determine if a fee is payable to the ambulance service operator by a person transported to Western Health in an emergency.

Western Health stores information in hardcopy format on our premises and electronically on our servers, as well as through third parties who provide services to us, both in hardcopy format (for example off-site archives) and electronically (for example through cloud-based information storage systems).  Some clinical services may involve the direct collection, storage and use of information by a third-party service provider, for example to monitor the functionality of implantable devices such as pacemakers.
 

To the extent required by the Relevant Legislation, Western Health will take reasonable steps to:

• make sure that your information that we collect, hold, use and disclose is accurate, complete and up to date; and
• protect your information that we hold from misuse, interference and loss and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.
   

Information held by Western Health which is no longer required is destroyed or de-identified in a secure manner, subject to the requirements of the Relevant Legislation. 

Western Health may disclose your information outside of Victoria and/or overseas.  For example, Western Health may use service providers who are located outside of Victoria and/or overseas and may disclose your information to such service providers to the extent necessary for those service providers to deliver services to Western Health and/or to you. Suppliers are contractually required by Western Health to manage your information to a standard that reflects our obligations to you under the Relevant Legislation. Some suppliers have publicly available privacy policies that assist us to confirm how information disclosed by us to the supplier is handled. 

You have the right to request access to your information held by Western Health.
 

The most common requests for access to information received by Western Health (as a Victorian Public Health Service) are requests for copies of medical records. The FOI Act prescribes the process for requesting copies of medical records.

To information on how to make an FOI request to Western Health please visit our Accessing information about me page 
 

If our record of your information is incorrect in any way, you can request for it to be corrected.