Privacy

Personal information

Personal information collected may include your name, address, date of birth, gender, email address, phone number, some medical history, information about your illnesses, symptoms, disabilities, your ethnic background and sexual practice (if relevant to your health or provision of the services) and any other information required in order for us to provide you with:

(a) information or services relating to aged care;
(b) a health service (including an allied health service); and/or
(c) an aged care service provider (collectively referred to as ‘Services’).

Some of the information collected, such as health information, will be ‘sensitive information’ as defined by the Privacy Act.

How do we collect your personal information?

Personal information may be collected when you, or someone on your behalf, contact the Department via the My Aged Care Website, Contact Centre or other government agencies to access or request information on services, send an email, fax, letter or complete an online or paper form.

By providing your personal information to us (including any sensitive information about you, e.g. information about your health and medical details), you are consenting to the Department collecting, using, disclosing and handling that information as described in this Privacy Policy. More information on who we disclose information to is below.

Do you have to identify yourself?

You may choose to deal with the Department anonymously or by providing a pseudonym. If you wish to remain anonymous when dealing with the Contact Centre, please advise the Customer Support Specialist assisting you. Providing your personal details enables the Department to provide you with an Online Account and reference number which allows you, and other authorised persons, to retrieve information about that call at a later date.

If you choose not to provide your personal information when you call the Contact Centre or use the Website (e.g. the Make a Referral form), the full range of Services available to you may not be offered.

The Department may also record information about health services to be provided to you in the future or your wishes about the future provision of Services.

You may be required to provide your postcode when using the search function on the Website in order to locate a Service near you. However, this information is not stored by the Department unless you register for a My Aged Care Online Account.

The Department may collect personal information about you from a third party in order to provide you with the services you need or to update your details. For example this may be from a GP, a residential aged care facility, an aged care provider, an assessment worker or any other health professional who is referring you for assessment or aged care services. The Department may also collect information about you from a family member, friend or other person who contacts us on your behalf.

If the Department collects your personal information from someone else, reasonable steps will be taken to:

• confirm you have consented to us collecting your personal information; and
• let you know that personal information (including notifying you of certain other matters under privacy law) has been collected, will be taken.

If you disclose another person’s personal information to us (e.g. sensitive information about another person’s health and medical details), in providing that personal information to us you agree that:

• you have drawn this Privacy Policy to that person’s attention;
• that person has agreed to you providing their personal information to us; and
• that person understands and agrees that we may use, disclose and manage their personal information as described in this Privacy Policy.

If you are contacting the Department on behalf of another person, we will also collect some personal information about you, including your name, contact details and your relationship to the person being referred.

What will we do with your personal information?

The Department will collect, hold, use and disclose personal information for reasons including:

• arranging, facilitating or assisting in the provision of Services to you, including managing complaints relating to the provision of the Services (which may include, but is not limited to, privacy complaints or complaints made to the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission)
• providing information about, and supporting access to, relevant support and care services for senior Australians
• creating a personalised Online Account and providing you with access to your My Aged Care Online Account via myGov
• maintaining a central Online Account to improve service delivery and appropriate information sharing, including referrals, by aged care providers, assessment workers, residential care facilities, hospitals, and health professionals
• managing the Australian Government’s aged care system
• assisting Commonwealth, State or Territory health services or departments of health to provide you with services or to address issues you may raise with them
• making information available to health professionals and other persons authorised by you to see your My Health Record
• service improvement
• compilation of data and statistical analysis for public health and safety
• complying with our legal obligations.

Who your personal information may be shared with

The Department may share your information with providers of Services such as an assessment worker, an aged care provider, a residential care facility which is managing your care, a hospital or a health professional. We may also share your information with your family member, friend or other person who is providing you with care (if they are authorised to receive your personal information). We may disclose your personal information to someone who is authorised to conduct your affairs if you become incapacitated.

The Department will share relevant information with health services and/or government bodies in the event of a national or jurisdictional health disaster so that an appropriate health response can be provided.

The Department of Health and Aged Care will make relevant information available to your My Health Record if you authorise this to occur. This information will then be accessible by health professionals and other people authorised by you to see your information in your My Health Record. You may withdraw this authorisation at any time.

The Department may contact you for feedback on your satisfaction with the Services. Your email address will only be used for the purpose for which you have provided it.

The Department will not add you to any mailing lists without your consent and will not use or disclose your email address for any other purpose without your consent, unless authorised or required by law.

The Department will generally not disclose your personal information to anyone except as described in this privacy policy without your consent.

The Department may also disclose your personal information if:

• we are authorised or required by law to disclose it
• it will prevent or lessen a serious threat to someone’s life, health or safety or a threat to public health or safety
• it is required for public health surveillance where symptoms are mapped geographically to see if patterns arise as an early warning system identifying epidemics
• it is necessary as part of the establishment or defence of a legal claim
• it is requested by an enforcement agency such as the police
• it is a necessary part of an investigation following a complaint or incident
• there is a change of website service provider, in which case we may disclose your personal information to a new similar service provider.

When we disclose your personal information to third parties, we make all reasonable efforts to ensure we disclose only relevant information and that it is accurate, complete and up to date.

We will not sell or rent your personal information to anyone and will not transfer your information overseas unless you ask us to do so.

How do we protect your personal information?

The My Aged Care website does not store your personal information. Information that is collected on the website is stored in the My Aged Care system which can only be accessed by authorised people.

The Department has systems and procedures in place to protect your personal information from misuse and loss, and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.

The Website has been tested to an advanced level of site security. However, users are advised that there are inherent risks in transmitting information across the internet, including the risk that information sent to or from a website may be intercepted, corrupted or modified by third parties. If you have any security concerns, or if you wish to provide personal information by other means (e.g. by telephone or paper), you may contact the Contact Centre on 1800 200 422.

How do we store and maintain your personal information?

The Department has processes in place to ensure records of your personal information remain accurate, complete and up to date, including by verifying the information with you each time you use the Services, and from other sources.

If you learn that personal information we hold about you is inaccurate, incomplete or not up to date, please contact the Department so we can promptly update our records.

How can you access and correct your personal information?

You may ask to access and/or correct your personal information by contacting the Department.

The Department may be unable to give you a copy of your personal information if:

• it was provided anonymously;
• if the information contains details about other people; or
• if it would be unsafe to provide the personal information because it may lead to harm being done to another person.

If the Department refuses to provide you with access to your personal information or to update your record in the way you request, we will provide you with written reasons.

If the Department refuses to correct or update your information, you may request a note be made on your record that you are of the opinion the information is inaccurate, incomplete, out of date, irrelevant or misleading, as the case may be.

The Department will not charge you for lodging a request for a copy of your personal information but we may ask you to pay a reasonable fee for the work involved in providing you with this information and for associated costs such as photocopying. The Department will notify you of any likely costs before we process your request.

Australian Death Notification Service

Where you have opted to notify the Department about the death of an individual through the Australian Death­­­ Notification Service (managed by NSW Customer Service), the Department will collect your personal information from NSW Customer Service for the primary purpose of communicating with you about the notification.

If you do not provide your personal information, or if the information you provide about the person who passed away is incomplete, inaccurate or does not match information in our systems, the Department may not be able to contact you or may not be able to process your notification.

By sending your notification to Department, you consent to the Department collecting, using and disclosing your name and contact details (for example, address, phone and/or email) for the purposes indicated above.

Other websites 

This website contains links to other sites. The Australian Government is not responsible for the privacy practices of any third parties nor are they responsible for the material contained in a website that is linked to this site.

When you go to other websites from here, we advise you to be aware and read their privacy policy.

Analytics

To improve your experience on our site, we may use 'cookies'. Cookies are an industry standard, and most major websites use them.

When you visit this site, the Department of Health and Aged Care makes a record of your visit and logs the following information for statistical or systems administration purposes:

• the user's server address
• the user's top level domain name
• the date and time of access to the site
• pages accessed and documents downloaded
• the previous site visited
• type of browser used

This information is analysed to show broken links in our website, bottlenecks, and other site problems. We use this information to maintain our site for your efficient use. 

The Department uses cookies for maintaining contact with a user through a website session. A cookie is a small file supplied by the Department, and stored by the web browser software on your computer when you access our site. Cookies allow us to recognise you as an individual web user, as you browse our website.

Two cookie types may be used by this website:

• Session cookies
  These exist only for the duration of a web browser session with a particular website/host. All cookies will be immediately lost when you end your Internet session or shut down your computer. Our copy of your information will be automatically deleted 20 minutes after you last used the system. This information is only used to help you use our website systems more efficiently, not to track your movements through the Internet, or to record private information about you. 
   
• Persistent cookies
  These exist for a defined period of time (usually beyond the termination of the current session) before expiring.

Cookies privacy

No attempt will be made to identify users or their browsing activities unless legally compelled to do so, such as in the event of an investigation, where a law enforcement agency may exercise a warrant to inspect the Internet Service Provider’s log files.

You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser. However, please note that if you do this, you may not be able to use the full functionality of this website.

Our website uses Google Analytics, a service which transmits website traffic data to Google servers in the United States. Google Analytics does not identify individual users or associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. We use reports provided by Google Analytics to help us understand website traffic and webpage usage.

By using this website, you consent to the processing of data about you by Google in the manner described in Google's privacy policy (external site) and for the purposes set out above. You can opt out of Google Analytics if you disable or refuse the cookie, disable JavaScript, or use the opt-out service provided by Google (external site).

Contact us

If you have ideas about how we can improve the content and usability of this website, or have a privacy complaint or concern, you can contact us via the Contact us page.

Last reviewed: October 2021.