Privacy policy

Patients Australia respects your right to privacy and is committed to safeguarding the privacy of our customers and website visitors. We adhere to the Australian Privacy Principles contained in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). This policy sets out how we collect and treat your personal information.

In this Privacy Policy:

• “Personal information” is information we hold which is identifiable as being about you.

• “Patients Australia”, “our”, “we” and “us” refers to Patients Australia (ABN 25 146 474 688).

• "You" and "your" refers to anyone (including members to whom we provide services, and non-members) who provide us with personal information in their interactions with us.

The types of personal information that the Guild collects about you will ultimately depend on the interactions that we have with you. The Guild typically collects some or all of the following information:

• General Information about you: your name, title, gender, date of birth.

• Contact details: address, contact phone number, email address.

• Employment details.

• Details of your Professional qualifications and (where applicable) your registration details with the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency.

• Payment details: such as credit or debit card number and expiry date.

• Dietary requirements, and

• Our interactions with you: including any feedback, complaints, responses to surveys, records of correspondence and interactions with our staff (including in person, online, by telephone, email and via social media).

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If you do not wish to provide us with particular information, we may not be able to respond to your query, provide you with our products or services or assess your membership application.

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Sensitive Information: We will only collect sensitive information about you with your consent (unless we are otherwise allowed or required by law to collect that information). Sensitive information includes information about your health, race, ethnic origin and religious beliefs.

How we collect your personal information will depend on our relationship or interactions with you.

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Directly from you

We mainly collect your personal information directly from you, including when you use our website (through completion of online or physical forms) or social media, you call or write to us, we interact with you in person, when you access or engage with our products and services or at seminars, events and functions.

Indirectly
We may also collect your personal information from other sources. For example, we may collect information about you from a publicly available source, social media or from a third party (including service providers and suppliers). If you provide us with personal information about other individuals, you are responsible for letting those individuals know that they can find a copy of this Privacy Policy on our website.

Automatically
Whenever you visit or interact with one of our websites or other online platforms (Platforms), we may use a variety of technologies (including cookies and pixels) that automatically record information about how the Platform is accessed and used (“Website Analytics Information”).

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Website Analytics Information collected by Patients Australia includes:

• server and IP address (the electronic addresses of computers connected to the Internet)

• top level domain name accessed (for example .com, .gov, .au)

• the date and time of your visit to each of our websites

• the duration of your visit to each of our websites

• the webpages you accessed and documents downloaded during your visit

• the previous website you visited

• if you have visited our website before, and

• the type of browser used.

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The Website Analytics Information is used to identify your generic behavioural patterns, analyse trends, to customise and improve user website experience, report statistics, track user movements, gather broad demographic information, website administration and maintenance purposes and to target and improve the quality of Patient Australia’s products and services. The Website Analytics Information collected by us is not personal information and Patients Australia does not use this information to personally identify any individual.

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We use Google Analytics and other media publishers to advertise our products and services online. Third party vendors use cookies to display relevant ads based on your past visits to our websites. Information and data collected through Google Analytics is stored by Google on servers in Belgium, Chile, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Singapore, Taiwan and the United States of America. You can opt out of the collection of information via Google Analytics by downloading the Google Analytics Opt-out browser add on. You can also change the settings in your browser to control how your browser deals with cookies. However, in doing so, you may limit the functionality of each of our websites and be unable to access certain pages or content on our website.

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Patients Australia will, on occasion, use third party platforms to deliver information to our members, subscribers and stakeholders. These third-party platforms are websites hosted and managed by organisations other than Patients Australia. Before deciding if you want to contribute to any third-party website, please familiarise yourself with the relevant privacy collection notice and privacy policy in the first instance.

We may use your personal information for the following purposes.

• Membership: to administer, process and manage your membership application including where necessary, facilitating any complementary membership or introductions to our Corporate Partners.

• Elections: managing and coordinating Patients Australia elections, referendums and other matters outlined in Patient Australia's Constitution.

• Programs: to administer and manage programs relating to Patients Australia.

• Advocacy and policy advice: 

  • to advocate on behalf of members, issue guidance to members, research and analyse issued relating to patient care and experience generally

  • to correspond with persons and stakeholders who have an interest in health policy and issues affecting patients in Australia

  • to consult with members, non-members and stakeholders who Patients Australia reasonably believes would want to be consulted about an issue relating to patient care and experience.

• Maintain Contact Lists: to maintain contact lists (including address, email and phone number) of individuals who may have an interest in Patients Australia and our Services, are involved in health care and/or a media representative with an interest in the healthcare sector.

• Marketing purposes: to provide you with updates and offers, if you have chosen to receive these including:

  • to inform you about, and operate, promotions, events, products and services offered by us

  • to inform you about Government policy affecting patients and the services available to patients and advocates

  • to promote and deliver training and patient related educational content

  • to distribute our communications and newsletters

  • marketing of products and services

  • We will provide an option to unsubscribe or opt-out of any electronic marketing sent to you on our behalf. If you opt-out of receiving marketing material from us, we may still contact you in relation to our ongoing relationship with you.

• Customer support: to handle your enquiries, requests and complaints, and

• Research: to conduct market, consumer and other research to support patient advocacy activities and to improve our products, services, marketing activities and website content.

We may disclose your personal information to our Corporate Partners. Where this is the case, our Corporate Partners are only permitted to use your personal information for the purpose it was collected for, unless an exception applies. We may also disclose your personal information to third parties where necessary to complete a request from you or to perform our activities and functions, including:

• to financial institutions or payment processing platforms

• universities

• the Australian Electoral Commission

• our member benefits partners and sponsors

• your nominated emergency contact (where applicable)

• our third-party contractors including:

  • event organisers

  • information technology services and support

  • marketing and communication agencies

  • mailing houses, freight and courier services

  • printers and distributors of direct marketing material, and

  • external business advisers.

We may also disclose your personal information to third parties where required or authorised by law.

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We do not share your personal information with data resellers, social networks or advertising networks unless we have your consent or as otherwise required or authorised by or under law.

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We do not give your personal information to other organisations, agencies, or individuals unless you (or your authorised representative) have consented for us to do so, or in our assessment may reasonably expect, that information of the kind provided will be given to a third party as a matter of standard practice.

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Where reasonably practical, or where the provision of information to third parties is in our assessment outside the scope of the purposes outlined above, we will provide you with advance notification of, and obtain your informed consent to, the proposed disclosure.

Our websites is hosted on Wix utilising a multi-cloud network with providers like AWS, Google Cloud, and Fastly, alongside Wix's own servers.

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We hold your personal information in a combination of hard copy and electronic files. patients Australia takes reasonable steps to ensure your personal information is stored securely and protected from loss, unauthorised access, use, modification or disclosure, interference and misuse, regardless of whether that personal information is stored in electronic databases or physical form. These steps include using third party secure payment gateways for the processing of payments​ and restricting access to your personal information only to personnel who need it to perform their functions.

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While Patients Australia endeavours to protect the personal information and privacy of website users, we cannot guarantee the security of any information that you disclose to us online. You disclose that information at your own risk. If you are concerned about sending your information to us over the internet you can contact Patients Australia.

If we have given you (or you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of our websites, you are responsible for keeping this password secure and for complying with any other security procedures notified by us to you and not to disclose that password to anyone else.

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Data Retention: Our retention periods for personal information are based on legal requirements. We retain your personal information for as long as is necessary for the processing purpose(s) for which the information was collected, and any other permissible, related purpose. When personal information is no longer needed, at our election, we either securely destroy it, or irreversibly de-identify that personal information

You have the right to access, or correct, the personal information that we hold about you. If you would like to request access to, or correct your personal information, please contact us using the contact details set out below. Patients Australia will allow access or make the requested changes unless Patients Australia considers there is a sound reason under the Privacy Act or other relevant law to withhold the information, or not make the requested change.

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If we refuse your access or correction request, we will provide you with a written notice setting out the reasons for our refusal and how you can make a complaint to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.

If you have any complaints about our privacy practices, please feel free to send in details of your complaint to Privacy Complaints. We take complaints very seriously and will respond shortly after receiving written notice of your complaint.

We may amend this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect our current data collection and disclosure practices, with or without notice to you. The most recent version of our Privacy Policy is available on our website. We recommend that you visit our website regularly to keep up to date with any changes to this Privacy Policy.

If you have any questions, concerns or complaints about your privacy please contact the Patients Australia Privacy Officer using the details below:

Email: privacy@patients.org.au