Privacy Policy
Ellipsis Psychology Pty Ltd (Ellipsis Psychology) (ACN 685 109 942) (“us”, “we”, “our” or “the practice”) respects your privacy and your right to control how your Personal Information is collected, used and stored.
Our Privacy Policy outlines how we collect, use, manage, store and disclose your personal information in accordance with the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) set out in the Privacy Act 1988, the Health Privacy Principles (HPPs), the Health Records Act 2001 (HRA), Health Records Regulations 2023 and other relevant privacy legislation (together, the “Legislation”).
When you register as a client of Ellipsis Psychology, you provide consent for the psychologists and practice staff to access and use your personal information to facilitate the delivery of healthcare to you or your medical practitioner. Access to your personal information is restricted to the practice team members who require it for your care. If we ever use your personal information for purposes other than for the provision of healthcare, we will obtain additional consent from you.
Collection
The practice collects, uses, stores and shares your personal information primarily to manage your health safely and effectively. The provision of Personal Information is optional, however, if you do not provide us with certain types of Personal Information, we may not be able to provide our healthcare services to you.
To provide our healthcare services, we may collect Personal Information including but not limited to your:
• Title, name, address and contact details including your email address and telephone numbers
• Date of birth (D.O.B)
• Gender
• Your country of birth
• Indigenous status
• Language spoken
• Occupation
• Disability status
• Psychological history and psychological assessment and/ or mental health screener results
• Medical history and current health information
• Family medical history
• Social history
• Medicare number (where available) for identification and claiming purposes if applicable
• Private health fund details for claiming purposes if applicable
• Your payment and billing information, which we use to bill you for the healthcare services and to process your payments
• Images or footage of identifiable individuals
• Your reasons for contacting us.
We collect this information directly from you, through triage, through you completion of our online enquiry form, creating a member account, intake forms, during consultations, or through referrals from other healthcare providers. We also collect this information via our employees, agents, and other third parties or through the deployment of third-party AI products and services which we use to assist us in recording, transcribing and summarising our triage process and psychology and assessment sessions with you.
We may at times collect Personal Information through visual and audio surveillance of various areas of our premises as permitted by relevant legislation and in accordance with our policies. We may also collect personal identifiers or information such as Medicare identifier, information directly and indirectly related to provision of healthcare services and details of conversations we have had with you or any other information relevant to us.
An identifier is a unique number assigned to an individual to identify them. Identifiers include Medicare Numbers and Tax File Numbers. We will not adopt, as our own, any of your identifiers or use or disclose an identifier which has been assigned to you by a government agency, unless permitted by law.
We automatically collect information that is often not personally identifiable, such as the website or applications from which you came to our website (www.ellipsispsychology.com.au) (Site), IP address, browser type and other information relating to the device through which you accessed the Site. We may combine this information with the Personal Information we have collected about you.
We may also collect Personal Information from job applicants for recruitment purposes. When this information is no longer needed, we will take reasonable steps to destroy or permanently de-identify it unless we are otherwise required by law.
Access, Use and Disclosure
We will treat your Personal Information as strictly private and confidential. We will only use or disclose it for purposes directly related to your care and treatment, or in ways that you would reasonably expect that we may use it for your ongoing care and treatment. Your Personal Information is only accessible by our employees and contractors (such as our psychologists and practice staff) on a strict-needs basis and on a strictly confidential basis.
Personal Information collected by us will generally only be used and disclosed for the purpose it was collected. This includes maintaining your contact details and clinical records, providing you with our healthcare services and processing payments and managing billing. We may disclose your Personal Information to third-party service providers who perform functions on our behalf (e.g., IT services, payment processing, accounting, call recordings) and to third-party AI service providers whom we engage to record, transcribe and summarise our triage process and our psychology and assessment sessions.
We may, from time to time, use Personal Information for another purpose where it would be reasonably expected by you or if permitted by the Privacy Act, including to effectuate or enforce a transaction, procuring advice from legal and accounting firms, auditors and other consultants.
We may also disclose your Personal Information in circumstances where we are compelled by Australian legislation or a court of law to do so. We do not sell your Personal Information. We may aggregate the information you and others make available to us on a deidentified basis and share it with third parties for market analysis, research, marketing or other purposes such as to improve our healthcare services or to help our partners understand more about the users of our healthcare service and health issues. You can object to us using your information for these purposes.
We may use transcription technology to assist with efficiently managing inquiries during phone calls with our administration staff. Your phone calls with our administration staff may be recorded for quality and training purposes only. This information remains confidential and will not be used for any other purpose.
We may provide Personal Information to other healthcare service providers, such as your allied health professionals, general practitioner and specialist medical practitioners. We will only supply this information with your consent, or in circumstances where it is required for the delivery of healthcare services, such as referral to another healthcare service provider, billing and liaising with government offices regarding Medicare entitlements and payments, where it is necessary to prevent or lessen a serious threat to a patient’s life, health or safety, or other reason as permitted by law.
Telehealth Consultations
We offer telehealth consultations via secure video conferencing or phone platforms. While we use secure platforms to protect your privacy, there are potential risks associated with telehealth, for example service interruption and technical difficulties. Your psychologist will discuss these potential interruptions and technical difficulties with you during your first telehealth session.
Clinical Supervision
Psychologists may discuss client information with supervisors or during professional case consultations. This information will be de-identified to protect client confidentiality.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) Scribes
The practice’s psychologists and clinicians may use an AI scribe tool to support note taking during their consultations with you. Novo Note AI scribe uses an audio recording of your consultation to generate a clinical note for your client record. NovoNote is compliant with AHPRA and the APPs, ensuring that your personal information and data is handled appropriately. For more information please visit: https://novopsych.com.au/novonote-security/ .
Your Access and Accuracy of Personal Information
You can access and/or correct information we hold about you at any time by contacting us at connect@ellipsispsychology.com.au . We encourage you to contact us to keep your Personal Information accurate and up to date. We will respond to your request for Personal Information within a reasonable timeframe. We may charge a reasonable administration fee to cover the costs of responding to your request, for example, where Personal Information is held in storage, subject to applicable laws and regulations. If required by law or where the information may relate to existing or anticipated legal proceedings, we may deny your request for access to your information. We will respond to your request, setting out the reasons for our refusal in writing.
Storage and Security
We will take reasonable steps to protect your Personal Information from misuse, loss, unauthorised access and modification or disclosure. We use commercially reasonable physical, technical, and administrative measures to protect Personal Information that we hold, including, where appropriate and practicable, password protection, encryption, and SSL to protect our Site. We also implement secure electronic record-keeping systems, confidentiality agreements with all staff, regular data backups and we restrict access to our clients’ personal information based on role requirements. Despite taking appropriate measures to protect your Personal Information used and collected by us, please be aware that no data security measures can guarantee 100% security all the time. We cannot guarantee the security of any information transmitted to us via the internet and such transmission is at your risk. If we no longer require the use of your Personal Information, we will take reasonable steps to destroy or permanently de-identify it unless we are otherwise required by law.
Personal Information may be stored electronically on our local server and by way of back up on a secure third-party data centre, located in Australia, or in physical storage at our practice or third-party secure storage facilities.
Anonymous Health Care
You may request to remain anonymous when you seek healthcare services from us. While we endeavour to comply with any request to use our healthcare services anonymously or using an alias, there may be circumstances in which it is unlawful or impracticable to do so. For instance, we cannot provide Medicare rebates without properly identifying you.
Third-party Websites
At times, our Site may contain links to other third-party websites. Any access to and use of such linked websites is not governed by this Privacy Policy, but, instead, is governed by the privacy policies of those third-party websites. We are not responsible for the information practices of third-party websites.
Ellipsis Psychology utilises third-party overseas service providers to help us provide and improve our services (for example, by hosting data, facilitating payments, tracking website use). These service providers may be located in the United States of America, Europe or other international locations which have differing privacy obligations. Where possible, we will take reasonable steps to try to ensure these overseas providers comply with Australian privacy legislation.
Marketing Emails
Ellipsis Psychology will not use your personal information for marketing any goods or services to you without your expressed consent. If you do consent, you may opt out of direct marketing at any time by notifying the practice in writing.
We may send you direct marketing emails and information about healthcare services that we consider may be of interest to you. These communications will only be sent via email and in accordance with applicable marketing laws, such as the Spam Act 2003 (Cth) as you consented to upon registering for our healthcare services. If, at any time, you would like to stop receiving these promotional emails, you may follow the opt-out instructions contained in any such email (e.g. by clicking “Unsubscribe”). Please note that it may take up to 10 business days for us to process opt-out requests. If you opt-out of receiving emails or promotions from us, we still may send you email about your account, your account or any healthcare services you have requested or received from us, or for other customer healthcare service purposes. We do not provide your Personal Information to other organisations for the purposes of direct marketing.
Consent to international transfer
We may transfer your Personal Information to third parties located in other countries including our related entities or employees, external healthcare service providers such as administration providers or information technology providers such as cloud storage and data processing. We only transfer information where we reasonably believe that the recipient is legally or contractually bound to principles that are substantially similar to the Australian Privacy Principles.
Changes to this policy
We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time. Any updated versions of this Privacy Policy will be posted on our Site. Your continued use of any of our Site and healthcare services constitutes your acceptance and understanding of the Privacy Policy as in effect at the time of your use. This Policy is current as of 16/03/2025.
Complaints and Enquiries
If you have any questions or complaints regarding privacy, or if at any time you believe we may have wrongfully disclosed your Personal Information or breached our Privacy Policy, please contact us at 0493 334 972 or lodge your complaint in writing via email to:
The Director, Ellipsis Psychology Pty Ltd at connect@ellipsispsychology.com.au .
If you are not satisfied with our response, you are entitled to contact the NSW Privacy Commissioner under the Health Records and Information Privacy Act 2002 (HRIP Act) https://www.ipc.nsw.gov.au/ .