National Skin Cancer Centres uses the booking platform HotDoc to schedule patient appointments. We want to reassure all patients that this platform does not and will never misuse patient information, including selling patient information to third parties or altering reviews.
Your information and privacy is always maintained by HotDoc when making appointments. You can read more at the platform's privacy statement below or reach out to HotDoc directly.
National Skin Cancer Centres asks all patients to complete a form during their initial consultation so we can collect relevant information about you that may include your name, address, contact number, and email address. This information is used to assess your suitability for treatments, provide you with important pre- and post-treatment information, keep you up to date with our services, and confirm your appointments. Please let us know of any changes to your personal details to help us get necessary or important information to you.
Appointments
Appointments can be made online, via telephone, or in-person at one of our centres.
Please arrive five to 10 minutes before your appointment to allow time for checking in. If you are late, we may not have time available to provide your full treatment. Treatments cannot be rushed. You will still be charged for the full appointment.
For health and safety reasons, children cannot accompany patients in the treatment rooms and will not be supervised by our staff.
For us to provide you with the best service, it is important that you share with us all the information requested when completing consent forms or when asked about any factors which may affect your treatment. Our treatments and products may not be suitable for you. Due care and skill are always exercised when treating our patients, but it is your responsibility to identify whether a treatment or product is right for you.
Patients should also hold realistic expectations of the results that are achievable through treatments they receive. Please work with your Skin Doctor or Skin Therapist to determine what results you are likely to achieve.
Cancellations
Patients are required to give a minimum of 24 hours’ notice for appointment cancellations to allow time to reallocate your appointment to another patient. Cancellations can be made in-person at our centre or via telephone. Please do not try to cancel your appointment via social media message.
If you cancel your appointment within 24 hours of the appointment time or fail to attend without appropriate notice, we reserve the right to charge a cancellation fee of 50% of the treatment cost. In the case of pre-paid treatments, the treatment will be forfeited.
Refunds
We are not required to provide a refund if you change your mind about the products or services you asked for. If the product or service has a major problem, you can choose to cancel your contract and receive a refund for unconsumed services or products.
Treatment packages are not transferable to other individuals or centres. Please keep proof of your agreement in the form of an invoice or receipt. Our staff reserve the right to determine suitable treatments for our patients.
If you pre-pay for treatments, you will save an amount according to the pre-payment schedule. No refunds are available on pre-paid treatments. They are not transferrable to other individuals, treatment areas, or centres.
Pre-paid treatments must be used within 12 months of purchase. You agree to these terms by purchasing pre-paid treatments.
Purchases made through the online shop
Treatments, services, or products purchased through our online shop via Shopify are regulated by the aforementioned National Skin Cancer Centres conditions of use, privacy policy, cancellation policy, and refund policy.
Requests for refunds of treatments, services, or products purchased online must be made in writing to info@skincancercentres.com.au for consideration. We may decide, upon review of your written request, whether a refund is appropriate.
Privacy Act changes effective 12 March 2014.
For the purposes of the Privacy Act, National Skin Cancer Centres is an APP entity (APP1). We take the privacy and confidentiality of patient information very seriously.
This document will refer to the National Skin Cancer Centres as ‘us’ and ‘we’.
Throughout this document, an individual that we use and disclose personal and health information about will be referred to as ‘you’ and ‘your’, including a patient, a patient’s carer, a patient’s dependent, a staff member or a contractor.
This document details how we meet the 13 Australian Privacy Principles (APP). The National Skin Cancer Centres collect personal and health information about individuals for the principle purpose of assisting patients manage their health and improving patient health outcomes generally (APP6).
We may disclose personal and health information to other health care providers in line with our principle purpose. Some information is collected as part of the necessary process of running a business in Australia (e.g. staff personal information collected in staff files).
We must take steps to ensure that the personal and health information that we use and disclose about you are accurate, up-to-date and complete. We will ask you repeatedly to supply the same personal information.
National Skin Cancer Centres is committed to protecting your privacy and any personal information we collect. We comply with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). This policy explains how we collect, use, disclose and otherwise handle personal and sensitive information.
National Skin Cancer Centres is committed to safeguarding personal privacy. We recognise that individuals have a right to control how their personal information is collected and used. Providing personal information is an act of trust and it is taken seriously. Unless given consent to do otherwise, we will only collect and use personal information as set out below.
For the purposes of this policy, personal information may mean some or all of the following: a patient’s name, contact details, date of birth, emergency contact details, bank account and/or credit card details, other identification details, payment history, treatment details, before and after photographs and other sensitive information.
National Skin Cancer Centres will not collect or monitor any personal information about an individual without their consent. The only personal information collected is what is provided voluntarily by a patient or prospective patient.
When a treatment or product is purchased, personal information will be requested in order to provide the treatment or product, provide updated information, and advise of other treatments and products which may be of interest. You are not obligated to provide personal information, but failure to do so may result in us being unable to provide services or products to you.
You don’t need to identify yourself when you deal with us. However, in certain situations we will only deal with individuals who have identified themselves to us.
For the purposes of this policy, sensitive information means the information a patient has disclosed to us about their physical and mental health and well-being.
Sensitive information will only ever be used for providing services to patients. Such information will not be used or disclosed for any other purposes without consent, except in cases when disclosure may be required by law or is necessary to protect the rights or property of National Skin Cancer Centres or any member of the public, or to lessen a serious threat to a person’s health or safety. For the purposes of this Privacy Policy, sensitive information is a subset of personal information.
As a health provider, we are required to use various government identifiers (APP9). For patients, these identifiers include Individual Healthcare Identifiers (IHI), Medicare card numbers, Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) file numbers, concession card details, and Safety Net Numbers. For staff, suppliers and contractors, these government identifiers include Tax File Numbers (TFN) and Australian Business Numbers (ABN).
We may disclose personal information about you to various government departments and other entities for the purpose of billing those entities for the health services that we provide to you. We may also be required to disclose personal information to other government departments. For example, TFNs and ABNs are provided to the Australian Taxation Office as a normal part of doing business in Australia.
Patients can obtain an official pseudonym (APP2) in the form of an Individual Healthcare Identifier, by application to the Department of Health. We are required to identify patients either by Individual Healthcare Identifier or some other form of identification. We are required to identify staff and contractors for many reasons, including taxation purposes, and we will conduct police checks where appropriate.
Most of the information that we use or disclose will be provided by you or your carer (APP3 and APP5). Some personal and health information will be collected from other health care providers. There may be occasions where we are provided personal or health information that we did not request (APP4). On a case-by-case basis we will determine whether this becomes personal or health information that we use and disclose as per this policy, or whether this information is deleted.
We will not sell or otherwise use or disclose your personal or health information unless authorised by you, except where the use or disclosure is required by law or where the disclosure of your health information is reasonably required due to a permitted health situation. We may charge these other entities for our intellectual property (the health information collected by us, and the clinical management, thoughts and processes associated with that health information).
We may send a copy of a regular newsletter to your email address or your home address. We may write to you at your home address or contact you via telephone or SMS (where you have agreed to SMS messages) to remind you of appointments or to contact you about some results, or to suggest preventative health options (e.g. flu vaccinations) (APP7).
In the case of staff and contractors, we may contact you in the normal process of running our business.
Cross-border disclosure of personal information:
Patients – We will not disclose any personal or health information to any overseas entity (APP8). We do not use ‘cloud’ services for any patient-related material, and all information is stored securely, electronically in Australia. Some of the entities that we disclose personal or health information to may use cloud based services or services in overseas countries, however these entities should disclose this to you.
Staff – We do use accounting software that is cloud based (APP8). Employment records and payroll information is located on cloud servers owned by a New Zealand corporation (Xero). They have their own privacy policy which matches the Australian Privacy Principles available from their web site.
Information kept by the National Skin Cancer Centres is stored securely electronically. All access to information is protected by individual user names and passwords (APP11). The RACGP set standards for electronic records in their computer security guidelines. We meet and exceed those standards.
If we hold personal or health information about you that is incorrect, we will take reasonable steps to correct this information. If there is any contentious information, especially health information, both the information that we have collected and your version of that same information will be kept.
Please contact us if you feel that we may hold information that is inaccurate and we will discuss these differences. Often, inaccurate information is easily updated.
National Skin Cancer Centres uses tracking technologies such as cookies to make use of the website and services as convenient as possible. Cookies are pieces of information that a website transfers to a computer’s hard disk for record-keeping purposes. Most web browsers are set to accept tracking technologies such as cookies. These tracking technologies do not themselves personally identify users, although they do identify a user’s browser. These tracking technologies allow us to monitor our website and record how people are using the site. It is possible to set the browser to refuse tracking technologies such as cookies, but this may limit the services provided by our website.
Personal information will be used for the following primary purpose:
National Skin Cancer Centres may employ other companies or service providers to assist us in providing our services, including (but not limited to) marketing, market research, mail-house services, hosting and product development services, analysis of patient lists and/or consulting services. Third parties may have access to personal information needed to perform their specific function. They cannot use that information for other purposes.
National Skin Cancer Centres provides links to websites outside of our site. These sites are not under our control, and we are not responsible for the conduct of companies linked to the website, or for the performance or otherwise of any content and/or software contained in such external websites.
Information may be reviewed by submitting a written request for such access. Individuals have the right to review personal and/or sensitive information that may be recorded on the National Skin Cancer Centres database. This will take the form of you sitting with a doctor or practice manager and viewing information held by us. You may elect to bring someone with you. This does not mean that a copy of the information that we hold about you will be automatically provided to you or your lawyer or your insurance company.
A request may be made to delete or amend personal and/or sensitive information, and all reasonable steps to delete the information will be made, except where it is required for legal reasons, which includes but is not limited to the proper maintenance of medical and health records. Deletion or amendment of information may result in us being unable to sell products directly and/or provide services including after sales services (APP12).
If you request in writing for information about you to be disclosed to third parties, we may elect to do that, and we may charge the third party for this information.
Excluding children, we are unable to provide information about any patient to their immediate family without prior written consent. We will use / disclose information about child patients to their parents / guardians, except where a child is determined to be a ‘mature minor’ by the doctor, and then that ‘mature minor’ requests that their personal health information be kept from their parents.
National Skin Cancer Centres takes all reasonable steps to keep secure personal information recorded and to keep this information accurate and up to date. Personal information is stored on secure servers if in digital format or in locked areas if in hardcopy format: these are protected in controlled facilities. National Skin Cancer Centres employees and data processors are obliged to respect the confidentiality of any personal and/or sensitive information held by us. We only permit authorised personnel to access your information and information will only be disclosed to third parties where they have the appropriate authority. We destroy or de-identify personal information we no longer need, or we are no longer required by law to keep, wherever possible.
National Skin Cancer Centres does not send advertising information without obtaining prior consent. If an individual receives communications from National Skin Cancer Centres which they do not wish to receive, they may remove their name from the marketing database by contacting us via the contact page on the website.
Implications of Withholding Personal Information
Understanding the potential repercussions of not providing personal information is crucial for our patient care. The absence of required personal information can lead to several challenges:
Inability to Access Comprehensive Care: Lacking necessary personal and health-related information, our clinic may find it challenging to offer the full scope of specialised skin cancer care services you might need. This limitation could restrict your access to treatments and interventions critical for your treatment and ongoing surveillance.
Compromised Care Quality: The quality and effectiveness of our care may be significantly reduced without access to your complete personal health information. We rely on this data to customise treatments and interventions, aiming to provide the most effective and personalised care possible. Without it, achieving the best outcomes for your health might be compromised.
Reduced Communication Efficiency: Without your contact information and health background, our ability to communicate essential results, reminders and clinical recalls.
Circumstances of Personal Information Disclosure at Our Clinic
The confidentiality and security of your personal information are of paramount importance to us. However, there are specific situations where your information might be disclosed:
Service Providers: We may share your personal information with third-party service providers who assist in delivering our services, such as laboratory analysis, appointment scheduling software, patient record management, and payment processing. These providers are obligated by contracts to protect the confidentiality of your personal information.
Legal Obligations: Should it be required by law, or to comply with legal proceedings, respond to claims, or protect the rights, property, or safety of our clinic, our patients, or the public, we may disclose your personal information as necessary.
With Your Consent: We may share your personal information for purposes beyond the provided, we have your explicit consent to do so. We ensure all disclosures of personal information are in strict adherence to applicable laws and regulations, and we aim to limit the information disclosed to what is necessary for providing our services or complying with legal requirements.
Problems, queries or complaints
For further information regarding this Privacy Policy or to make a complaint about the steps taken by National Skin Cancer Centres to protect your personal information or privacy, please contact us via the contact page on the website. We will investigate any complaints received in writing and do our best to resolve them as soon as possible.
If you are not satisfied with the result, you can refer your complaint to:
Office of the Australian Information Commissioner
Phone: 1300 363 992
Post: GPO Box 5218, Sydney NSW 2001
Online Form: www.oaic.gov.au
Please be aware that contacting OAIC may infringe on your privacy and that often information sent to government departments is subject to Freedom of Information legislation. You should check their privacy policy before you send any personal information to any government department.
National Skin Cancer Centres reserves the right to review, amend, update and change this Privacy Policy to reflect its practices and obligations. Any changes will take effect when they are made or posted on our website.