Brisbane Counselling Centre Pty Ltd ACN 010 871 020 (BCC, we, us or our) takes your privacy seriously and is committed to protecting your privacy under the Privacy Act and other relevant laws including Public Records Act 2002 (Qld) and Healthcare Identifiers Act 2010 (Cth). This Privacy Policy describes how we collect and treat your Personal Information.
By accessing or visiting our website and/or using our services (whether the service is completed by you or not), you agree to be bound by this Privacy Policy. We may amend this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of important changes, highlight them at the top of this Privacy Policy, and provide a prominent link to those changes for a reasonable length of time following the changes. You consent to the amended Privacy Policy by continuing to use our services.
We offer services and facilities to psychologists who provide psychology and counselling services to their patients at our premises.
If you have any questions about our use of your Personal Information or have any concerns about our compliance with the Australian Privacy Principles, please contact:
Natascha Madden, Director
Brisbane Counselling Centre
Level 7, 87 Wickham Terrace Brisbane QLD 4000 Australia
Tel: (07) 3831 4452
Fax: (07) 3831 4457
This Privacy Policy relates to all information supplied by you to us including:
We may receive Personal Information directly from you, the company or organisation you represent, or screening providers who assist us with our legal obligations. This information may be exchanged over the phone, by email, SMS, in person, in any other form of written communication or through our online enquiry form on our website. We may also obtain Personal Information about you from a healthcare professional such as your treating GP or specialist doctor.
If you send us an email containing Personal Information, we will use reasonable endeavours to ensure the confidentiality of that information. Our internet host may monitor emails for maintenance and fault detection purposes. We may also monitor emails so as to ensure that we are complying with our legal obligations. We may forward emails to related service providers and other third parties where the email contains feedback or complaints. Email is not a secure method of communication. If you are concerned about sending your Personal Information to us by email we suggest that you consider contacting us in person, by writing or by telephone.
We do not collect Personal Information about your online activities across third party websites or online services.
In addition to the information you provide to us, any information supplied by you to a psychologist will not be made available to other psychologists, staff or interested parties without firstly obtaining your written consent (unless required by law).
If you do not wish to provide Personal Information to us, then you do not have to do so, however it may affect your use of the website and/or any products and services offered on it.
We use your Personal Information for the following purposes:
If there is a change of control in our business or a sale or transfer of business assets, you consent to us transferring (to the extent permissible at law) our user databases, together with any of your Personal Information and non-personal information contained in those databases to the new purchaser.
We will process your Personal Information for a number of reasons including:
Our legitimate interests include looking after your health and wellbeing, monitoring how users access our website, understanding and responding to feedback and enquiries, and providing the appropriate facilities and services to enable the phycologists to service their patients.
We will only use Sensitive Information if:
There are instances where we can disclose your Personal Information where it is permitted or required by law. We share your information with others as follows:
We may keep your Personal Information in physical and electronic form (or a combination). We will store and process your information securely using good practice physical, technical and administrative security measures. However, exchanging information by the internet is not completely secure. Although we will take reasonable measures to protect your Personal Information, we cannot guarantee the security of information you transmit, so any transmission is at your own risk.
Where your Personal Information is also kept by a psychologist, how they treat your information is dealt with under their own privacy policy. We encourage you to read their privacy policy.
We retain the data we collect for different periods of time depending on what it is and how we use it. We generally keep your information as needed to provide our services to the psychologists, or as requested by the psychologists, comply with legal, accounting or regulatory requirements or to deal with claims. We also have a legal requirement to store your information for at least seven years from the time you had last contact with a psychologist, or if you are a minor, until you turn 25 years of age.
Once we no longer need to hold your Personal Information, we will destroy it (either by shredding physical documents or permanently deleting electronic information from our server, subject to any back-up records).
If you believe that any Personal Information that we hold is inaccurate, out of date, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading, please contact us in writing. It is your responsibility to advise us of any changes to your Personal Information (for example change of residential address, email address or phone number). We will respond within a reasonable time where practicable and will endeavour to correct any personal information. You may request we provide you with, or delete, your Personal Information. Any written request by you cannot be unreasonably withheld by us and we will be responded to within a reasonable period (and no more than 30 days after your request).
Please contact us if you would like to access the Personal Information that we hold about you. We will generally provide you with access to your Personal Information within a reasonable period (and no more than 30 days after your request). Depending on the amount of information requested, we may charge an access fee to cover the cost of retrieving the information and supplying it to you.
Access to Personal Information may be refused in a number of circumstances, such as where the information relates to anticipated legal proceedings or the request for access is frivolous or vexatious. If we deny or restrict your access, we will explain why in writing. Similarly, in some limited circumstances we may not make requested corrections to Personal Information, in which case we will provide you with written reasons for this decision.
If you have any concerns about the way your Personal Information is stored, disclosed or otherwise managed, or believe that a breach of your privacy has occurred, please contact us in writing. We will respond to your concerns as soon as reasonably practicable (and no more than 30 days after your request). If you are for whatever reason not satisfied with the response or resolution of your concerns or complaint, you can contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.
Cookies are pieces of information that a website transfers to your computer’s hard disk for record keeping purposes and which allow us to provide you with customised services. We use cookies and Google Analytics on our online services.
Google Analytics collects and processes data by using the website’s cookies to analyse the use of the website including, for example, how long users spend on each webpage and collect other ‘Online data’ described above. This information is used mainly for the optimisation of the website to enhance the user experience, and to allow us to better deliver our services. The data collected by Google is transmitted to a server in the United States (or other countries outside of Australia).
You can review how Google uses data by clicking on the following link: https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites
Most browsers are initially set to accept cookies. If you would prefer, you can set your browser to refuse cookies. However, if you do so, you may not be able to take full advantage of our website.
We will not use Commonwealth government identifiers (Identifiers) (for example, Medicare numbers) as our own identifier of individuals. We will only use or disclose Identifiers in the circumstances permitted by the Privacy Act.
We may store your data in different parts of the world, and your information may be transferred out of Australia, including to the United States. Data protection laws vary by country. We will take steps to protect your information in line with locally applicable data protection requirements
Our website, email updates and other communications may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of others. The Personal Information that you provide through these websites is not subject to this Privacy Policy and the treatment of your Personal Information by such websites is not our responsibility.
If you follow a link to any other websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy notices which will set out how your information is collected and processed when visiting those sites.
In this Privacy Policy, the following terms have the meaning given to them below unless the context requires otherwise:
Last update: Aug 2023