Privacy Policy and Cancellation Policy

Privacy Policy

OUR COMMITMENT TO YOUR PRIVACY

June 2025

1. Introduction

We are committed to handling personal information about you, including health information about you, in accordance with the requirements of the Commonwealth Privacy Act 1988.

Our policy is to inform you of:

the kinds of information that we collect and hold;
how we collect and hold personal information;
the purposes for which we collect, hold, use and disclose personal information;
how you may access your personal information and seek the correction of that information;
how you may complain about a breach of the Australian Privacy Principles and how we will deal with such a complaint;
whether we are likely to disclose personal information to overseas recipients;

2. What kinds of personal information do we collect?

The type of information we may collect and hold includes:

Your name, address, date of birth, email and contact details
Medicare number, DVA number, NDIS number, plan dates and details, and other government identifiers, although we will not use these for the purposes of identifying you in our practice.
Other health information about you, including:
- notes of your symptoms or diagnosis and the treatment given to you
- your specialist or other reports if you supply them to us
- your appointment and billing details
- your prescriptions
- your healthcare identifier
- your health fund details
- any other information when collected by your Occupational Therapist.

3. How do we collect and hold personal information?

We will generally collect personal information:

from you directly when you provide your details to us. This might be via a face to face discussion, telephone conversation, registration form or online form
from a person responsible for you
from third parties where the Privacy Act or other law allows it - this may include, but is not limited to: other health care professionals involved in your care, hospitals, Medicare, your health insurer, from the My Health Record system, from your NDIS team, plan or delegate, etc.

4. Why do we collect, hold, use and disclose personal information?

In general, we collect, hold, use and disclose your personal information for the following purposes:

to provide Occupational Therapy services to you
to communicate with you and others involved in your care in relation to the Occupational Therapy service being provided to you
to comply with our legal obligations, including, but not limited to, mandatory reporting under legislation, responding to a court order or subpoena or mandatory reporting under applicable child protection legislation.
to help us manage our accounts and administrative services, including billing, arrangements with health funds, pursuing unpaid accounts, management of our ITC systems
for consultations with other providers, therapists and health professionals involved in your healthcare
to get test results from diagnostic and pathology services
for identification and insurance claiming
to conduct accreditation, quality assurance or internal audits
to liaise with your health fund, government and regulatory bodies such as Medicare, the Department of Veteran's Affairs and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) (if you make a privacy complaint to the OAIC), as necessary.
to lessen or prevent a serious threat to a patient’s life, health or safety or a serious threat to public health or safety
to help in locating a missing person
to establish, exercise or defend an equitable claim through the My Health Record
to prepare the defence of anticipated or existing legal proceedings
to discharge notification obligations to liability insurers.

5. How can you access and correct your personal information?

You have a right to seek access to, and correction of the personal information which we hold about you.

For details on how to access and correct your health record, please contact our practice as noted under our ‘Contact’ page.

We will normally respond to your request within 30 days.

6. How do we hold your personal information?

Our staff are trained and required to respect and protect your privacy. We take reasonable steps to protect information held from misuse and loss and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. This includes:

Holding your information on an encrypted database
Holding your information in secure encrypted cloud storage
All paper-based information is scanned, uploaded to encrypted storage and shredded as soon as possible
2-factor authentification is used wherever possible

7. Privacy related questions and complaints

If you have any questions about privacy-related issues or wish to complain about a breach of the Australian Privacy Principles or the handling of your personal information by us, you may lodge your complaint in writing to admin@ability-co.com. We will normally respond to your request within 30 days.

If you are dissatisfied with our response, you may refer the matter to the OAIC:

Phone: 1300 363 992

Email: enquiries@oaic.gov.au

Fax: +61 2 9284 9666

Post: GPO Box 5218
Sydney NSW 2001

Website: https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/privacy-complaints

8. Anonymity and pseudonyms

The Privacy Act provides that individuals must have the option of not identifying themselves, or of using a pseudonym, when dealing with our practice, except in certain circumstances, such as where it is impracticable for us to deal with you if you have not identified yourself.

9. Overseas disclosure.

We may disclose your personal information to the following overseas recipients:

any practice or individual who assists us in providing services (such as where you have come from overseas and had your health record transferred from overseas or have treatment continuing from an overseas provider)

anyone else to whom you authorise us to disclose it

10. Updates to this Policy

This Policy will be reviewed from time to time to take account of new laws and technology, changes to our operations and other necessary developments. Updates will be published on www.ability-co.com.

11. Contact details for privacy related issues

Ability Co Occupational Therapy PTY LTD

admin@ability-co.com

0493 068 330

Cancellation Policy

At Ability Co. we value consistent and high quality intervention. Unfortunately, late cancellations prevent us from being able to see and book another client into your slot. This cancellation policy is therefore created to ensure services are provided to all required, respecting the need for our services, the time of our staff and the needs of others, as well as reducing unnecessary late cancellations where possible.

A Short Notice Cancellation (or no-show) will incur a 100% fee. Cancellations that occur before the window of a Short Notice Cancellation will incur no fee.

Short Notice Cancellation – 2 clear business days:

This policy typically applies where a participant has provided less than two (2) clear business days’ notice of cancellation, or if a participant does not show up for their scheduled appointment within a reasonable time or is not present at the agreed place within a reasonable time when the Occupational Therapist is travelling to deliver the support. In this instance, a reasonable time is generally considered to be 15-30 minutes.
The NDIS Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits document indicates that we can claim for a Short Notice Cancellation – 2 clear business days, in respect of that support item.
We may choose to waive the short-notice cancellation fee at our discretion (this may relate to the individual circumstances of the participant).
We were not able to find alternative billable work for the Occupational Therapist.

Short Notice Cancellations will incur a fee of 100% of the agreed fee associated with the activity from the participant’s plan, subject to the NDIS Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits and the terms of the service agreement with the participant.

Example of a Short Notice Cancellation incurring a 100% fee:

An appointment for a one-hour session plus travel time is scheduled for 10 am on a Tuesday following a Public Holiday on Monday of the same week.

A participant cancels the appointment after 10 am on the Thursday before the Public Holiday. We are not able to find alternative billable work where the appointment and additional travel time were scheduled. The claim is made at the agreed rate for the service against the relevant support.

Notifying us of a cancellation:

If you need to cancel an appointment it is recommended that you do so prior to 2 business days to avoid a cancellation fee (see above Short Notice Cancellation). If you are unable to reach us over the phone to cancel verbally, you must do so via email, text, or voicemail. A missed call on its own without a voicemail will not be sufficient to avoid a cancellation fee.

Notice must be provided within normal business hours, which are 9am-5pm Monday-Friday, except public holidays. If you do not notify within these hours, it will be counted as a notification provided at the start of the next applicable business hour.

No-shows and late arrivals:

Should your therapist arrive at your scheduled appointment and you are not at home or at the agreed location of the appointment with no prior notice, the scheduled session including travel will be charged at 100% of the scheduled fee for that session. Your Occupational Therapist will wait a reasonable amount of time, taking reasonable steps to contact you. If you are late, the session may not be extended beyond the planned end time to accommodate, at the discretion of the Occupational Therapist.

Where Ability Co. cancels a support due to operational reasons, staff sickness, or any other foreseeable/unforeseeable reason, the service incurs no penalty to either party. Where multiple cancellations or no-shows occur within a 12-month period, we will initiate contact with the client, their family or their support network to establish that the supports we are providing are best suited to the client.

Consenting to our Privacy Policy and Cancellation Policy:

For services to be provided by Ability Co Occupational Therapy, you must consent to the above policies. You can indicate this within the relevant Referral Form checkbox.