Privacy Policy
Sydney Adult and Children’s Ear Nose Throat Centre
Last updated: 1.04.2026
Introduction
Sydney Adult and Children’s Ear Nose Throat Centre (“we”, “us”, “our”) is committed to protecting the privacy and confidentiality of personal and health information in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs), and applicable New South Wales health privacy laws, including the Health Records and Information Privacy Act 2002 (NSW).
This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and store your personal and health information.
What Information We Collect
We collect personal information, including sensitive information (such as health information), that is reasonably necessary for the provision of our medical services and the operation of our practice, in accordance with applicable privacy laws.
The types of information we may collect include:
1/ Personal and contact details – including your name, date of birth, address, telephone number, email address, and emergency contact details.
2/ Health information – including medical history, clinical notes, diagnoses, treatment information, medications, test results, and relevant family history.
3/ Medicare, DVA, and private health insurance details – required for identification, eligibility, and billing purposes.
4/ Referral and clinical correspondence – including information provided by referring practitioners and other healthcare providers involved in your care.
5/ Billing and payment information – including invoices, payment records, and related financial details.
We will only collect information that is reasonably necessary for our functions and activities as a specialist medical practice, or as otherwise required or authorised by law.
How We Collect Information
We collect your personal and health information in accordance with Australian Privacy Principle 3 (APP 3), which governs the collection of solicited personal information, including sensitive information such as health data.
We may collect your information in the following ways:
1/ Directly from you – including when you complete registration, medical history, or consent forms; attend consultations (in person, by telephone, or via telehealth); or communicate with us in writing, electronically, or verbally.
2/ From referring practitioners and other healthcare providers – such as general practitioners, medical specialists, allied health professionals, and hospitals involved in your care.
3/ From diagnostic and clinical service providers – including pathology laboratories, radiology and imaging providers, and other relevant healthcare services.
4/ From family members, parents, guardians, or carers – where you have provided consent, where it is unreasonable or impracticable to collect the information directly from you, or where necessary to provide appropriate care (including for children or patients requiring assistance).
5/ From electronic and online sources – including emails, website contact forms, online appointment bookings, patient portals, and other digital communication channels associated with our practice.
We will only collect personal information that is reasonably necessary for, or directly related to, our functions and activities as a specialist medical practice. Sensitive information (including health information) will only be collected with your consent, unless an exception applies under law.
Where reasonable and practicable, we will collect your information directly from you. If we collect information from a third party, we will take reasonable steps to ensure you are aware of the collection and that the information is accurate, up to date, and relevant to your care.
Purpose of Collecting Information
We collect, hold, and use your information for purposes including:
1/ Providing medical care and treatment
2/ Communicating with you and other healthcare providers involved in your care
3/ Managing our medical practice i.e. contact information, appointments and billing
4/ Meeting legal and regulatory requirements, including insurers
5/ Quality assurance and practice management
6/ To support the education and professional development of healthcare practitioners
Your personal information will be retained for the duration required to deliver our services and as otherwise necessary to comply with legal requirements, address disputes, and enforce our contractual obligations.
Children’s Privacy
We may collect personal and health information about patients under the age of 18 in order to provide medical care and related services. This information is collected with the consent of a parent or legal guardian. We do not knowingly collect personal information directly from children without such consent. Parents or guardians may request access to or correction of their child’s information by contacting us in writing.
For a child aged 18 years or older, we require written consent from the patient before disclosing their personal health information to a parent or guardian. Exceptions apply if the parent was present during the consultation, or if prior consent has already been provided by the patient. This ensures we comply with privacy laws and respect the autonomy of our adult patients, while also protecting the confidentiality of their health information.
Disclosure of Information
We may share your personal and health information where it is reasonably necessary for your care, treatment, or as otherwise permitted or required by law. This may include disclosure to:
1/ Referring practitioners, treating doctors, specialists, and other healthcare professionals involved in your care
2/ Hospitals, day surgeries, pathology laboratories, diagnostic imaging providers, and allied health services
3/ Medicare, private health insurers, and third-party billing or payment processors for claiming and administrative purposes
4/ Accreditation bodies, professional advisers, or service providers who assist in the operation of our practice (e.g. IT support), subject to appropriate confidentiality obligations
5/ Regulatory authorities, courts, or tribunals where disclosure is required or authorised by law (including in response to a subpoena or other legal request)
6/ Government agencies for public health reporting, safety, or compliance requirements
We only disclose the minimum information necessary for the relevant purpose and take reasonable steps to ensure that any third parties handling your information are bound by confidentiality and privacy obligations.
In the event of a change of control in our business, such as a merger, sale, or transfer of assets, customer information, which may include your personal data, may be transferred to the new owner under a confidentiality arrangement. Any such disclosure of your personal data will be made in good faith and only as necessary under these circumstances.
We will not use or disclose your personal information for marketing purposes without your express consent.
How is Personal Information Secured?
Data Security
We implement generally accepted standards of technology and operational measures to safeguard your personal information from loss, misuse, alteration, or unauthorised access. Access to personal information is restricted to authorised staff and approved third-party service providers, all of whom are required to maintain confidentiality. While we take these precautions seriously, we cannot guarantee that your personal information will never be accessed by unauthorised persons/parties.
Physical Security
Our premises are secured, and any hard-copy records are stored in locked filing cabinets or secure rooms accessible only to authorised practice personnel.
Breach Notification
If a security breach occurs and your personal data is compromised, we will notify you promptly in accordance with applicable laws.
Electronic Communication and Security Disclaimer
While we take reasonable steps to protect the security of your personal and health information, you acknowledge that the transmission of information via the website, email, the internet, or other electronic means carries inherent risks.
Electronic communications may not be secure and can be subject to interception, unauthorised access, or alteration. Accordingly, Sydney Adult and Children’s Ear Nose Throat Centre does not warrant or guarantee the security or integrity of information transmitted electronically.
By choosing to communicate with us via email, the internet or other electronic means, you consent to the use of these communication methods and accept the associated risks. To the extent permitted by law, we disclaim liability for any loss, damage, or unauthorised access arising from electronic transmission of your information.
Types of Electronic communications:
1/ Email
2/ Website
3/ Online forms and portals
4/ Mobile apps
5/ Messaging Systems
7/ Cloud Storage or data transfer over the internet
8/ Electronic health record
9/ Online payment systems
10/ Other
Online Referral Form Data Lifecycle
When you or your referring practitioner utilise our online referral upload form, we collect personal and sensitive health information. To ensure maximum data protection in accordance with Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) and the Health Records and Information Privacy Act 2002 (NSW), this page utilises end-to-end Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption. No medical documentation, patient identification, or uploaded files are permanently stored, cached, or recorded within the website’s database or web server. Your data will be securely transmitted directly to our clinical triage team via encrypted email routing, before being permanently purged from the local web server instantly upon submission.
Once received, the documentation is processed by our clinical triage team and manually removed from our email history to ensure records are only maintained within our secure medical management system.
Cookies and Other Technologies Used to Collect Personal Information
We may use cookies and related technologies, such as web beacons, to collect information on our website. A cookie is a text file that is placed on your hard disk by a web page server. Cookies cannot be used to run programs or deliver viruses to your computer. Cookies are uniquely assigned to you, and can only be read by a web server in the domain that issued the cookie to you. One of the primary purposes of cookies is to provide a convenience feature to save you time. The use of a cookie is to tell the Web server that you have returned to a specific page. For example, if you register with us, a cookie helps Sydney Adult and Children’s Ear Nose Throat Centre to recall your accurate information on subsequent visits and helps us to simplify the process of recording your personal information, such as billing addresses, shipping addresses, etc. When you return to the same Sydney Adult and Children’s Ear Nose Throat Centre website, the information you previously provided can be retrieved, so you can easily use the features that you customised. A web beacon is a small graphic image that allows the party that set the web beacon to monitor and collect certain information about the viewer of the web page, web-based document or email message, such as the type of browser requesting the web beacon, the IP address of the computer that the web beacon is sent to and the time the web beacon was viewed. Web beacons can be tiny and invisible to the user, but, in general, any electronic image seen as part of a web page or email, including HTML based content, can act as a web beacon. We may use web beacons to count visitors to the web pages on the web site or to monitor how our users navigate the web site, and we may include web beacons in email messages to count how many messages sent were opened, acted upon or forwarded.
Third-party vendors also may use cookies on our web site. For instance, we may contract with third parties who will use cookies on our web site to track and analyse anonymous usage and volume statistical information from our visitors and members. Such information is shared externally only on an anonymous, aggregated basis. These third parties use persistent cookies to help us to improve the visitor experience, to manage our site content, and to track visitor behaviour. We may also contract with a third party to send email to our registered users.
To help measure and improve the effectiveness of our email communications, the third party sets cookies. All data collected by this third party on behalf of Sydney Adult and Children’s Ear Nose Throat Centre is used solely by or on behalf of Sydney Adult and Children’s Ear Nose Throat Centre and is shared externally only on an anonymous, aggregated basis. From time to time we may allow third parties to post advertisements on our website, and those third-party advertisements may include a cookie or web beacon served by the third party. This Privacy Policy does not cover the use of information collected from you by third-party ad servers. We do not control cookies in such third party ads, and you should check the privacy policies of those advertisers and ad services to learn about their use of cookies and other technology before linking to an ad. We will not share your personal information with these companies, but these companies may use information about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements on this site and other sites about goods and services that may be of interest to you, and they may share your personal information that you provide to them with others. We may also use cookie data to show personalised or targeted advertising on third parties advertising networks such as Facebook™ or the Google™ Display Network.
Links
This site contains links to other websites that provide information that we consider to be interesting. Sydney Adult and Children’s Ear Nose Throat Centre is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such web sites. We recommend that users review the privacy policies of any external websites they visit, particularly where personal information may be collected. Please note that this privacy policy applies only to information gathered through this website.
Access and Correction of Personal Information
You have the right to request access to your personal and health information and to request corrections if necessary. Requests should be made in writing, and we may charge a reasonable fee for providing access in accordance with the schedule of fees specified in the Health Records Regulations 2008. This fee cannot be claimed through Medicare. If there is a cost, we’ll let you know ahead of time.
Complaints
If you have any concerns about how your personal information has been managed by our practice, please submit your complaint in writing to our office. We will confirm receipt of your complaint and aim to provide a comprehensive response as soon as reasonably possible, typically within 30 days.If you are not satisfied with our response, you may escalate your complaint by contacting the NSW Information and Privacy Commission via ipc.nsw.gov.au and/or oaic.gov.au or call the OAIC on 1300 336 002 and/or the Health Care Complaints Commission via hccc.nsw.gov.au.
How an Individual May Contact Us
Attention: Privacy Officer
Sydney Adult and Children’s Ear Nose Throat Centre
Phone: (02) 9398 3039
Email: referrals@entsydney.com
Address: Suite 61A, Level 1,
Royal Randwick Shopping Centre 73 Belmore Road,
Randwick, NSW 2031
Changes to This Policy
Sydney Adult and Children’s Ear Nose Throat Centre reserves the right to modify this statement at any time. Any changes to this Privacy Policy will be listed in this section, and if such changes are material, a notice will be included on the homepage of the web site for some time. If you have any questions about privacy at any websites operated by Sydney Adult and Children’s Ear Nose Throat Centre or about our website practices, please contact us at referrals@entsydney.com
The information provided in this fact sheet is of a general nature. It is not a substitute for legal advice.
