Privacy Policy
Australian Speech Pathways is committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and protect your personal information when you use our online platform or otherwise interact with us. We adhere to relevant privacy laws and regulations, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) where applicable.
What Personal Data We Collect
We may collect various types of personal data depending on your interaction with our site or services. This may include:
- Identity and Contact Data: Such as your name, email address, phone number, postal address, date of birth, and gender.
- Health Data: Information about your speech and language needs, diagnoses, medical history, assessment results, therapy progress, and related health information. This is considered sensitive personal data.
- Usage Data: Information about how you use our site, services, and online resources, including pages visited, time spent on pages, links clicked, and referring websites.
- Technical Data: Such as your IP address, browser type and version, operating system, device information, and other technical identifiers.
- Payment Data: Information required for processing payments for our services (we do not store full payment card details ourselves).
- Communication Data: Content of your communications with us, feedback, and survey responses.
- Training Data: If you participate in our professional development or clinical training programs, we may collect information related to your qualifications, experience, performance, and evaluation results.
How We Collect Your Personal Data
We collect personal data through various methods:
- Direct Interactions: You may provide us with your personal data by filling in forms on our site, corresponding with us by post, participating in therapy or training sessions, or giving us feedback.
- Automated Technologies or Interactions: As you interact with our site, we may automatically collect technical data about your equipment and usage patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies and other similar technologies.
- Third Parties: We may receive personal data about you from various third parties, such as healthcare providers referring you to our services, educational institutions for student placements, or analytics providers.
How and Why We Use Your Personal Data
We use your personal data for legitimate business purposes, including:
- To Provide and Manage Services: To deliver assessment, therapy, training, and communication skills services, manage appointments, process payments, and administer your account.
- To Communicate with You: To respond to your inquiries, provide service updates, send appointment reminders, and communicate about our programs and offerings.
- For Healthcare Purposes: To provide clinical care, diagnosis, and treatment tailored to your specific needs, and to maintain health records in accordance with professional standards and legal requirements.
- For Educational Purposes: To facilitate participation in training programs, evaluate performance, and administer courses.
- To Improve Our Services: To understand how our services are used, gather feedback, conduct research, and develop new programs and resources.
- For Internal Business Operations: For data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting, and hosting data.
- For Security and Fraud Prevention: To protect our site, services, and users from security threats and fraudulent activity.
- To Comply with Legal and Regulatory Obligations: To meet our legal and professional responsibilities, respond to legal requests, and comply with applicable laws, regulations, and professional standards (such as those relating to healthcare record keeping).
Legal Basis for Processing Personal Data
We will only use your personal data when we have a lawful basis to do so. The legal bases we rely on include:
- Performance of a Contract: Where processing is necessary for the performance of a contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract (e.g., providing therapy services you have booked).
- Legal Obligation: Where processing is necessary for compliance with a legal or regulatory obligation that we are subject to (e.g., maintaining clinical records as required by health laws).
- Legitimate Interests: Where processing is necessary for our legitimate interests or those of a third party, and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests (e.g., improving our services, preventing fraud). We ensure we consider and balance any potential impact on you and your rights before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests.
- Consent: Where you have given clear consent for us to process your personal data for a specific purpose (e.g., for certain marketing communications). When processing sensitive personal data (like health information) for purposes beyond providing direct care or meeting legal obligations, we will seek your explicit consent.
- Vital Interests: To protect your vital interests or those of another natural person.
- Public Interest: Where processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority.
Data Security
We have implemented appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used, accessed in an unauthorised way, altered, or disclosed. Access to your personal data is limited to employees, agents, contractors, and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
Data Retention
We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, accounting, or reporting requirements. Retention periods for health records are specifically governed by relevant health regulations and professional guidelines, which typically mandate holding records for significant periods. To determine the appropriate retention period, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting, or other requirements.
Sharing Your Personal Data
We may share your personal data with trusted third parties where necessary to provide our services, operate our business, or comply with legal obligations. These may include:
- Healthcare Professionals: When necessary for coordinated care, referrals, or consultation, always with appropriate consent or legal basis.
- Service Providers: Third parties who provide services on our behalf, such as IT support, data storage, payment processing, or professional advisors (e.g., lawyers, accountants). These third parties are required to process your data in accordance with our instructions and applicable privacy laws.
- Educational Institutions: For clinical training placements, information sharing will be conducted according to specific agreements and requirements of the program, respecting privacy.
- Regulatory Bodies and Law Enforcement: When legally required to disclose information to comply with laws, regulations, court orders, or governmental requests.
We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.
International Transfers
Your personal data may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside of your country or the country where you provided the data. If you are located in the EEA, this means your data may be transferred outside the EEA. Where your personal data is transferred outside your jurisdiction, we will take steps to ensure that your privacy rights continue to be protected as outlined in this policy and in accordance with applicable privacy laws. This may involve ensuring the country has adequate data protection laws, using standard contractual clauses approved by relevant authorities, or relying on other lawful transfer mechanisms.
Your Privacy Rights
Under certain circumstances and applicable laws, you have rights regarding your personal data. Depending on your location and the specific laws that apply to you (such as GDPR), these rights may include:
- The right to request access to your personal data.
- The right to request correction of your personal data if it is inaccurate or incomplete.
- The right to request erasure of your personal data where there is no good reason for us to continue processing it.
- The right to object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest or for direct marketing purposes.
- The right to request restriction of processing of your personal data.
- The right to request the transfer of your personal data to you or a third party (data portability).
- The right to withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. Note that withdrawing consent does not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent.
If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please contact us using the details provided below. We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.
Cookies
Our site uses cookies and similar technologies to improve your experience, analyse site usage, and for security purposes. Cookies are small text files placed on your device. You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this service may become inaccessible or not function properly.
Children's Privacy
Our services are generally intended for adults and children receiving speech pathology services. When we collect personal data related to children, we do so with the knowledge and involvement of parents or legal guardians, or as otherwise permitted by law for healthcare services provided directly to a child. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children without appropriate consent or legal basis.
Changes to This Privacy Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Any changes will be posted on this page. We encourage you to review this policy periodically to stay informed about how we are protecting your information.
Contact Us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or our privacy practices, please contact us by mail at:
Australian Speech Pathways
501
350 William Street, Suite 501,
Melbourne, Victoria, 3000
Australia