A Mental Health Care Plan is a plan made by your doctor for treating a mental health problem over time. Our doctors will work with you to assess your mental health, what your needs are, what help you require and what treatment would be best for you.

Once you and your doctor have agreed on your goals and what support you need to achieve them, your doctor will write out the plan. They will then discuss this with the other members of your healthcare team; these may include psychologists, psychiatrists or other community care providers. Preparing the plan might take one visit or it might take a number of visits.

There are two types of plans that can be prepared by your GP for Chronic Disease Management; GP Management Plan and Team Care Arrangements. If you have a chronic medical condition that is likely to persist for greater than 6 months your GP may suggest a GP Management Plan. If you also have complex care needs and require treatment from two or more other health care providers, your GP may suggest Team Care Arrangements.

The Department of Health encourages people with a chronic illness to have an individual care plan developed, outlining their past history, medications and specific health issues.

Once a plan is in place, it should be regularly reviewed by your GP. This is an important part of the planning cycle, where you and your GP check that your goals are being met and agree on any changes that might be needed.

Immunisation is a simple and effective way of protecting children and adults against certain diseases. They are recommended for people at certain ages, life stages and those who may be at increased risk. Immunisation not only protects your own family, but also protects other by helping to control serious diseases in our community.

Vaccinations for all Australian children are funded. http://www.immunisation.health.new.gov.au offers parents access to comprehensive information on immunisation as well as easy-to-use free tools designed to help you remember your child’s vaccinations. Childhood vaccinations are currently due at the following ages:

• 2 months
• 4 months
• 6 months
• 12 months
• 18 months
• 4 years.

Adults who have been immunised as children may need booster doses to maintain immunity from certain diseases. New parents should have an adult whooping cough immunisation as soon as possible after their baby is born, as newborns are at risk of serious complications from whooping cough. Some vaccines are available free of charge but the majority you will have to pay for with a prescription.

You should talk to you doctor before being vaccinated if you:

• Are pregnant, breastfeeding or planning a pregnancy
• Have previously had a serious adverse event following immunisation
• Have impaired immunity due to disease or treatment

• General Skin Checks and Management of   skin lesions
• Medical Assessments

We are able to complete a wide range of medicals. These may include Pre-employment medicals, Sporting Medicals, Cadet Medicals, Diving Medicals, Commercial License and Truck Safe Medicals. Most of these require a thorough assessment so a 20 minute appointment is needs to be requested on booking.

There is no Medicare rebate with these types of medicals. These are subject to charge.

The completion of forms for Centrelink, Qld Transport and the like also generally require a 20 minute appointment. When booking in for these types of forms, please complete as much of the form as possible before hand to save time. Most of these forms are covered by Medicare but this can be confirmed with reception when making the appointment.

Our doctors can also complete Medical Reports for Legal, Insurance or Superannuation purposes. Medicare does not cover these so a fee applies for all doctors to complete them. A request is required from the company involved and appointments aren’t generally required for these. The report will be released to the company upon receipt of payment of the invoice sent to them

Privacy 

We are committed to protecting the privacy of patient information and to handling your personal information in a responsible manner in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), the Privacy Amendment (Enhancing Privacy Protection) Act 2012, the Australian Privacy Principles and relevant State and Territory privacy legislation (referred to as privacy legislation). This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use and disclose your personal information, how you may access that information and how you may seek the correction of any information. It also explains how you may make a complaint about a breach of privacy legislation. This Privacy Policy is current from May 2015. From time to time we may make changes to our policy, processes and systems in relation to how we handle your personal information. We will update this Privacy Policy to reflect any changes. Those changes will be available on our website and in the practice.

Collection

We collect information that is necessary and relevant to provide you with medical care and treatment, and manage our medical practice. This information may include your name, address, date of birth, gender, health information, family history, credit card and direct debit details and contact details. This information may be stored on our computer medical records system and/or in hand written medical records.

Wherever practicable we will only collect information from you personally. However, we may also need to collect information from other sources such as treating specialists, radiologists, pathologists, hospitals and other health care providers. We collect information in various ways, such as over the phone or in writing, in person in our practice or over the internet if you transact with us online. This information may be collected by medical and non-medical staff. In emergency situations we may also need to collect information from your relatives or friends. We may be required by law to retain medical records for certain periods of time depending on your age at the time we provide services.

Use and Disclosure

We will treat your personal information as strictly private and confidential. We will only use or disclose it for purposes directly related to your care and treatment, or in ways that you would reasonably expect that we may use it for your ongoing care and treatment. For example, the disclosure of blood test results to your specialist or requests for x-rays.

There are circumstances where we may be permitted or required by law to disclose your personal information to third parties. For example, to Medicare, Police, insurers, solicitors, government regulatory bodies, tribunals, courts of law, hospitals, or debt collection agents. We may also from time to time provide statistical data to third parties for research purposes we may disclose information about you to outside contractors to carry out activities on our behalf, such as an IT service provider, solicitor or debt collection agent. We impose security and confidentiality requirements on how they handle your personal information. Outside contractors are required not to use information about you for any purpose except for those activities we have asked them to perform.

Data Quality and Security

We will take reasonable steps to ensure that your personal information is accurate, compete, up to date and relevant. For this purpose our staff may ask you to confirm that your contact details are correct when you attend a consultation. We request that you let us know if any of the information we hold about you is incorrect or out of date.
Personal information that we hold is protected by:
• securing our premises;
• placing passwords and varying access levels on databases to limit access and protect electronic information from unauthorised interference, access, modification and disclosure; and
• providing locked cabinets and rooms for the storage of physical records.

Corrections

If you believe that the information we have about you is not accurate, complete or up-to-date, we ask that you contact us immediately.  Patients will then be directed to complete an Update Details Form.

Access

You are entitled to request access to your medical records. We request that you put your request in writing and we will respond to it within a reasonable time. There may be a fee for the administrative costs of retrieving and providing you with copies of your medical records. We may deny access to your medical records in certain circumstances permitted by law, for example, if disclosure may cause a serious threat to your health or safety. We will always tell you why access is denied and the options you have to respond to our decision.

Complaint

If you have a complaint about the privacy of your personal information, we request that you contact us in writing. Upon receipt of a complaint we will consider the details and attempt to resolve it in accordance with our complaints handling procedures. If you are dissatisfied with our handling of a complaint or the outcome you may make an application to the Office of the Health Ombudsman.

The Office of the Health Ombudsman

Office of the Health Ombusdman

400 George Street

Brisbane QLD 4000

Overseas Transfer of Data

We will not transfer your personal information to an overseas recipient unless we have your consent or we are required to do so by law.

Contact

Please direct any queries, complaints, requests for access to medical records please contact the Practice Manager.

 Privacy Statement

To enable ongoing care and total quality improvement within this practice, and in keeping with the Privacy Act 1988 and Australian Privacy Principles (APPs), we wish to provide you with sufficient information on how your personal and health information may be used or disclosed. We also wish to record your consent and or restrictions to this consent.

Our doctor/s and staff are required to sign a confidentiality agreement at commencement of employment at the practice, and are also given training in this area at induction.  This is so our staff better understand your privacy and how to protect it.  Your personal health information will only be used for the purposes for which it was collected or as otherwise permitted by law.  We respect your right to determine how your personal health information is used or disclosed.

The information we collate may be collected using varying methods.  Examples of this include:

• Medical test results (Pathology, Radiology etc)
• Notes from consultations
• Medical and Health Insurance details
• Data collected from interactions with you (observations. conversations)
• Details obtained from other health care providers (Specialist, hospital and other third party correspondence)

Your health information can also include information that you provide to us regarding your social and family history because it is relevant to your ongoing health management.

By signing below, you (as a patient/guardian) are consenting that on obtaining your personal health information it may be used or disclosed by the practice for the following purposes:

• Follow up, reminder or recall notifications for treatment and preventative healthcare. When you provide us with your phone number we accept this as your consent to use this to contact you.
• The diagnosis and treatment of any health condition, including the communication of relevant information only, to practice staff, specialists and other healthcare providers to ensure continuous quality of care is provided.
• For practice accounting procedures and the collection of professional fees internally (Medicare), and externally via debt collection services. Only your name, contact details and the outstanding invoices will be disclosed to external agencies should the need arise.
• Accreditation and Quality Assurance activities are conducted by professionally trained, non-treating GP’s and other professionally trained and qualified persons (Practice Manager).
• Fer legal related disclosure as required by a court of law, child protection agencies or in response to a subpoena.
• For third party requests by organisations such as insurance or law firms. Such requests will only be granted with the patient’s authority and only when a patient is making a claim or seeking legal representation.  Often these requests are for the entire medical record and may include information not directly related to the claim.
• Workers Compensation matters. As required by when a patient makes a WorkCover claim the legalities are such that the treating doctor must provide information when required.  This may be done verbally or in the form of a written report which includes all or part of the patient’s medical record.
• For the purpose of research only where de-identified information is used.
• For disease notification as required by law.
• Where you are unable to act on your own behalf due to a health condition, we may need to discuss your health information with relatives, emergency contacts or emergency services, in order to provide appropriate care.
• We will not send your medical information overseas, unless you specifically consent for us to do so or it is a requirement by law.
• If you interact with us via email, we may collect your email address in order to respond to you.

Should you have any questions or concerns regarding your privacy, you may contact the Privacy Officer at Banks Creek Medical Centre.

The Privacy Officer
Banks Creek Medical Centre
10 Banks Creek Road
Fernvale QLD 4306

Phone: 07 3463 9856

 

At all times, we are required to ensure your details are treated with the utmost confidentiality. Your records are very important and we will take all steps necessary to ensure they remain confidential.

I, ___________________________ give my permission for my personal health information to be collected, used and disclosed as described above, I understand only my relevant personal health information will be provided to allow the above actions to be undertaken and I am free to withdraw, alter or restrict my consent at any time by notifying this practice in writing. Please note any restrictions to this consent that you wish to apply at this point: -_____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________
Patient Name: (Please Print)
_____________________________________________________________________________
Signature: ____________________________________ Date: _______________________
Other family members (Each Patient 16 years or older must sign their own consent) you are signing this consent on behalf of: Please give name and date of birth for each individual that this consent applies to:

If not Patient signing -Your name (Please Print ) _____________________________________________________________________________

Relationship to patient: _____________________________________________________
(e.g. Mother, Father, Guardian)

PRACTICE USE ONLY: Witnessed by: ____________________________________________
(Staff Signature)

Patient Rights

Here at Banks Creek Medical Centre, patients have the right and are actively encouraged to participate in decisions regarding their healthcare.

Banks Creek Medical Centre offers a bulk billing service to the following card holders:

– DVA – Pension – Medicare – Health Care Card – Commonwealth Seniors Card

Unfortunately there will be instances where fees apply.  These include non-Medicare card holders and those items not eligible for a Medicare rebate.  If you are unsure if  your visit will be bulk billed, please ask reception staff at the time of booking.