Bendigo United Friendly Society (BUFS) Pharmacies is strongly committed to protecting your privacy when you interact with us. This includes any interactions on our website, in store and includes the privacy of health records as contained in Health Legislation in every state.
BUFS is also committed to protecting your information in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principals.
Your privacy is important to us at BUFS and we treat all information provided to us by you as confidential. We will only ever disclose your personal information when required by law or with your (or if appropriate your guardian’s) written consent.
In providing health services to you, BUFS wants to be transparent about the collection and use of your personal information.
The purpose of this policy is to explain:
BUFS collects information about you in the following circumstances;
Generally speaking there are two types of information we collect:
While in some circumstances you may not need to provide us with personal information, or you may use a pseudonym to interact with us, there are many circumstances when dealing with us that you must provide your personal information to us. For example, we are unable to process any prescriptions without the provision of your personal details, including your name and address and in some circumstances your Medicare number.
We will endeavor to ensure that any personal information obtained is complete, accurate, up to date and relevant.
We may also ask for your permission to provide you with information regarding upcoming promotions, specials or events. If you do not wish to receive this material you will need to check the relevant box on your BUFS membership application form you can also contact us either in store or by email or telephone (details below) and our staff will remove you from our mailing list.
BUFS automatically collects information to track user numbers and frequency of visitors to our website.
We use this information to help us identify what our users want from our online services and to help us identify what is unnecessary on our site. This data is predominantly collected using cookies. Most information is effectively anonymous, however, if you do not want this type of information recorded most personal browsers give you the option to disable cookies.
Information collected by us is stored electronically at the site where it is collected on secured servers. Your health information is only stored at the site where it was collected. These systems are backed up daily.
If you are a BUFS Member or if you have agreed to receive marketing material from us, your personal details are also stored at a central server located at head office.
If your personal information has been provided to us for the purpose of obtaining a schedule 8 prescription, your personal information will be stored electronically for a period of 3 years as required by law.
If your personal information has been provided to us for the purpose of obtaining any other type of prescription, your information will be stored electronically for a period of 12 months from the last date of dispensing.
If necessary, information will be stored on a longer basis at the discretion of the pharmacy manager.
In addition to the legal requirements above we generally keep user data on our server or in our archives for as long as we reasonably need it, for taxation, insurance purposes or legal issues.
We may alter this practice according to changing requirements. For example, we may delete some data, if needed, to free up storage space. We may keep other data for longer periods if the law requires it. In addition, information posted in a public forum could stay in the public domain indefinitely.
We do not sell personal information to third parties.
We may disclose personal information to our staff and to third parties involved in the provision of your health care services. Some of the third parties we will disclose your personal information to include; Medical practitioners or allied health practitioners, hospitals and police or other government agencies (where required by law).
We may also disclose personal information to trusted third parties who we engage to process your personal information for us.
We may also disclose to and utilise the services of third parties, such as MedAdvisor International Pty Ltd, to do any of the following in relation to sensitive and personal information:
In obtaining personal and other information from third parties whom we are referred to by you, we assume you have made the third party aware of the use and disclosure of the relevant personal or other information.
A third party may obtain or access your information from your implied consent or from your use of the third party’s goods or services, such as their website, which includes the third party obtaining or accessing personal information from us.
Personal information may also be disclosed to protect our legal rights, or in circumstances where the information relates to actual or threatened harm, threat to life, health or safety or in circumstances where we have good faith belief that such action is necessary to;
We may disclose personal information to other companies and organisations if we are concerned that there is a risk of fraud. The disclosure of information may include organisations that are located nationally.
We will not disclose information to international organisations unless you have provided your written consent for the disclosure of your personal information or we are required to disclose the information by law.
We will use all reasonable efforts to make you aware of the disclosure of your personal information contrary to the terms outlined in this Privacy Policy. For example, in such circumstances where it is unreasonable or impractical to obtain your consent prior to disclosing your personal information.
Where necessary we will keep a written record of any circumstances where we disclose your personal information.
You have a right to request access to personal information held by BUFS about you.
You also have the right to request correction of any personal information that we hold.
To seek access or corrections of your personal information please contact us as follows:
By email: [email protected]
By telephone: 5442 0410
By mail: Privacy Officer UFS Pharmacies Po Box 28 Bendigo 3552
We will never intentionally send you unwanted electronic commercial material, however, if you have provided permission to us we will send you information that we feel may be of interest to you.
We may also send you correspondence from time to time regarding a service you have used or a product you have purchased.
We use secure web services to collect your information and we store certain kinds of data in encrypted form.
We follow reasonable technical and management practices to help protect the confidentiality, security and integrity of data stored on our system. While no computer system is completely secure, we believe the measures implemented by us reduce the likelihood of security problems to a level appropriate to the type of data involved. Our servers follow Microsoft best practices with Antivirus and SSL encryption for all external connectivity, and use encryption technology that works with Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and AOL’s browser, with the objective that only we can read your personal information.
We encourage you to be vigilant about the protection of your own information when using digital services, such as social media. While we will endeavor to ensure that any relationships we have with third parties include an appropriate level of protection for your privacy, we will be limited in our ability to control any electronic platform operated by a third party, this includes but is not limited to Twitter, Instagram and Facebook
Your credit card information is only stored and transmitted in electronic form.
Any EFTPOS transactions in store or over the phone are not stored on our system. We do not hold or have access to your personal banking details once you complete a transaction.
Our website may contain links to third party websites.
We are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of these websites even if you access those sites using links from us. Your use of these third party websites is entirely at your own risk and we recommend that you check the privacy and security policy of each website you visit. Clicking on a third party link will take you to a third party’s website. We make no representation or warranty as to the effectiveness, quality, legitimacy or data protections of any third party website.
We want to ensure that we keep your personal information confidential and will do our best to do this, however, if you do have any questions or complaints regarding our use, collection or storage of your personal information, please feel free to contact us to discuss these issues:
By email: [email protected]
By mail: Privacy Officer UFS Pharmacies Po Box 28 Bendigo 3552
We will endeavor to respond to your query, comment or complaint within 30 days of receipt of your correspondence.
If you are unhappy with our response or if we do not provide a response within 30 days you can make a complaint to the Privacy Commissioner at the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (“OAIC”).
The OAIC can be contacted by telephone on 1300 363 992 or at www.oaic.gov.au