Our Privacy Statement



    Our commitment to your

        privacy

The privacy of individuals, including our customers and clients, is of utmost importance to Healthcare Assist. This includes information or opinions about you that we collect and record which reasonably could be used to identify you. We adhere to the National Privacy Principles and the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).

This document sets out our policies for managing personal information across the Healthcare Assist businesses operating in Australia. We have a Privacy Officer, whose contact details are below.

    Types of personal information

        we collect

When dealing with our customers and clients we generally collect your name, address, telephone number and other contact details.  We may also collect and update personal information necessary to set up and maintain your membership, such as date of birth, employment details, bank account details. We also record information about the status of your membership.

We generally do not collect sensitive information (such as relating to ethnic origin, religious or philosophical beliefs, membership of a political or trade association or sexual preferences), and would not do so without your consent.

     Why we collect personal

         information

Generally, we collect, update and use personal information about you to carry on our business, including:

   to process your application for membership services or facilities (including to check your identity) and to establish and manage your membership;

   to provide requested services to you, and bill you for our services and collect overdue payments;

for our research and development of new products and services;

   for training, quality control and verification purposes (including monitoring and recording your telephone conversations with us from time to time);

   to communicate our, a related company's or a third party's marketing offers to you - when making the offer we will let you know how you may stop receiving any further marketing offers. Where another organisation outside of Healthcare Assist and its related companies is involved in the offer, we do not give information about you to that organisation; and

   to meet our legal obligations.

     How we store information

We store personal information in a combination of secure computer storage facilities and paper based files and other records. We have taken a number of steps to protect the personal information we hold from misuse, loss and unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. We use generally accepted technology and security so that we are satisfied that your information is transmitted safely to us through the internet or other electronic means.

We will take reasonable steps to securely destroy or permanently de-identify personal information when we no longer need it.

    When we may disclose your

         personal information

Generally, we may disclose personal information about you in the following circumstances:
 

   where we have contracted an external organisation to provide us with support services. This may include but is not limited to processing applications or orders, marketing support, deliveries, market research and debt collection. These service providers may be within or outside Australia;
 

   to comply with our legal obligations (we notify you any time we are required to produce information in this way unless we are prohibited by court order or law or there is suspicion of fraud and/or criminal activity);
 

   where we suspect that unlawful activity has been or may be engaged in and the personal information is a necessary part of our investigation or reporting of the matter.

We impose strict requirements of security and confidentiality on all third parties as to how they handle personal information. We provide our outside contractors only with information they need to perform their services - they are not permitted to use the information for any purpose except to provide the service to us. The Privacy Act also strictly controls the information we exchange with credit reporting agencies.

We will disclose personal information about you only with your consent in the following circumstances:
 

   where organisations cooperate with us in offering products and services such as co-brand partners (we will notify you of that disclosure and obtain your consent on the application form);
 

   to meet your request for services; and
 

   to anyone else you authorise us to disclose information to, from time to time.