Fresenius Medical Care Australia Pty. Ltd. (“Fresenius”) has always recognised the need in maintaining a high level of privacy and confidentiality surrounding your personal information. As such, the company is committed to complying with the National Privacy Principles (NPPs) as laid out in the Privacy Act 1988, as amended (“Privacy Act”).

This statement seeks to address relevant issues surrounding the collection, use, storage, disclosure and access of personal information, with the aim of addressing any potential concerns from you, as our patients and customers.

Collecting Information

The Privacy Act seeks to establish minimum standards for the protection of privacy issues surrounding personal information.

Personal information relates to a natural, living person (as opposed to an entity) and is information or an opinion about an individual whose identity is apparent or can be reasonably ascertained from the information. This information goes beyond details such as your name, address etc and also includes sensitive information such things as your racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs or affiliations, sexual preferences or practices, criminal record or health information.

During the Company’s continual relationship with a natural person, we may hold personal information which may include;

• Details of name, age, contact details including address, phone number, fax number, email address etc.;
• Prescription details;
• Pertinent medical history or health information;
• Transaction details associated with services we have provided you;
• Products and supplies purchased.

Fresenius only collects information about an individual that is necessary to perform our functions as a provider of health services and products. We will only use fair and lawful ways to collect this information and wherever possible collect this information directly from the person.

At all times we will endeavour to make sure that the person is aware of the reasons behind collecting the information and wherever practical obtain consent when collecting sensitive information (i.e. health information).

We will also destroy or de-identify personal information due to redundancy after our legal obligations to retain the information have expired.

Data Quality and Security

Fresenius will take all reasonable steps to ensure that the personal and sensitive information collected is accurate, complete and up-to-date.

We will also take necessary steps to protect the information from misuse, loss or unauthorised access and handling, as the records are only accessible by those persons who require access to the personal information for the purposes of carrying out their employment,

Use of Information

We will only use personal / sensitive information in order;

• to provide medical treatment and care ;
• to assist treating doctors, nursing staff and other allied health professional in providing medical treatment and care at our facilities;
• to assist with any calls and enquiries made by the person to us;
• for our internal administrative requirements;
• to process private health fund claims;
• to provide information to Medical Practitioners, Registered Nurses and other allied health professionals who provide necessary follow up treatment and ongoing care;
• for benchmarking and clinical indicator reporting in a de-identified form;
• to provide data in both an identified and de-identified form to State Government agencies in compliance with numerous legislative requirements.

We will not disclose personal information to any person except on a confidential basis to agents that we use in the ordinary operation of our business, such as for data entry, printing, mailing, warehousing and delivery of our products.

Access

In accordance to the Privacy Act, Fresenius recognises the person’s right to obtain access to their information that we hold.

At any time requests of details of the information we hold may be made by the person concerned. A request should be made in writing to the Privacy Officer detailing what information is required. Where we hold information that the person is entitled to access, we will endeavour to provide with a suitable range of choices as to how the information may be accessed. No charge will be levied for such a request.

Right to Complain

If a person feels that Fresenius has breached its privacy obligation to that person, such person is entitled to lodge a complaint, at which time a thorough investigation will take place.

Complaints about possible breaches should be directed to:

Miscellaneous

This document represents our policy as at 21 December 2006. And is current unless formally revised, which can be done from time to time.

Although we intend to observe this policy at all times, we may regard it as necessary or desirable to act outside the policy. However, we shall always comply with the Privacy Act and recognise the statutory rights of our employees, customers and all others whose personal information the Company may in the course of its business have access to.