This Privacy Statement explains how the University of Otago Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka collects, stores, uses and shares your personal information and health information when you use the services offered by the University’s Pharmacy Clinic І He Rau Kawakawa Whare Haumanu.
Learn more about the services provided by the Pharmacy Clinic
The Pharmacy Clinic takes care to ensure that your personal and health information is managed in accordance with the Privacy Act 2020 and the Health Information Privacy Code 2020.
What is personal information?
Personal Information is information about an identifiable individual, e.g. their name, contact details, date of birth, gender, or ethnicity.
What is health information?
Health information is regarded as highly sensitive personal information. It includes NHI numbers, and other information about an individual’s health, their medical history (including medical conditions, allergies, medications, and measurements), health services provided to them and information collected while providing them health services (including consultation notes, test results, treatment plans, referrals and prescriptions).
Collection of personal and health information
The Pharmacy Clinic collects your personal information and health information to provide you with our services, including providing you with guidance on how best to use your medicines and answering any questions you may have. In order to provide you with our services, we need to get a thorough understanding of your medical conditions and the medicines you are taking. Our clinical pharmacists will need to know what medicines you are taking, including prescription medicines, non-prescription medicines, vitamins and natural health products. We will also need information relating to any allergies you have, your blood pressure and your blood sugar levels.
We collect health information from you directly, for example when you interact with our clinical pharmacists during consultations. We will also require you to complete a Patient Consent Form to enable us to provide you with our services. The Patient Consent Form requests you to provide your contact details (including your support person’s details) and other personal information including your date of birth, gender, ethnicity, any special needs (e.g. hearing or visual impairment), details of your GP and nominated pharmacy. This Form also obtains your consent to share your health information with other health professionals that are involved in your health care.
Once you have booked an appointment with us we may also access Healthconnect South in advance of meeting with you to view your health information (e.g., regarding recent blood results and specialists letters) to help guide our consultation with you.
With your authorisation we may also collect health information from third parties where required, such as from your family or other healthcare providers (your GP, nurse, physiotherapist, nominated pharmacist or other relevant health practitioners involved in your care).
We also create health information about you when we are delivering our services to you, such resolving any ineffective use of medicines that you are taking, identifying any potential medicine therapy problems, or assisting in the management of adverse effects.
It’s not mandatory that you provide us with this personal and health information, but we may need this information to be able to make informed decisions about your healthcare. We may not be able to properly understand your needs or provide you with our services if you do not provide us with this information.
How is your personal and health information used and shared?
We make sure that your personal and health information is used and shared only in ways that support your health and wellbeing.
All Pharmacy Clinic staff and students are required to sign a confidentiality agreement. Pharmacy Clinic staff who are involved in providing you with our services will access your personal and health information. Pharmacy students may also see patient information when assisting a Pharmacist as part of their training, however, they will not otherwise have access to your personal health information.
However, we may also need to share some health information about you with others, where we determine that the disclosure of this information is necessary to prevent or lessen a serious threat to:
- public health or public safety; or
- the life or health of you or others.
If we do need to share your health information with others:
- Where possible, we will share only anonymous information that does not identify you
- If we need to identify you, we will always try to tell you first and explain why we need to share the information
- We will share the minimum amount of information necessary to meet our objectives
- We will only ever share information with the people or agencies who really need to see it.
There are also instances where we may be required to share your health information with:
- Other healthcare providers with a legitimate role in your care, such as your GP, specialists, public hospital clinicians, pharmacists and paramedics.
- Te Whatu Ora, the Ministry of Health or the local PHO, if we are required under regulation or contract to provide this information
- Other health organisations, to be used in a non-identifiable manner for health statistics to assist with health funding
- Your family/whanau, where you have authorised this or in accordance with accepted medical practice
- Your health insurer, where you have authorised this as part of your claim process
- ACC, where your treatment is provided as part of an ACC claim
- Public Health
- the Coroner (e.g., if a death occurs and appears to be accidental or if the probable or likely cause of the death is unknown)
- Legislative Committees
- In the event of an emergency or serious threat to health or safety, Police, medical or hospital personnel, civil emergency services, your legal representative or nominated emergency contact person, or any other person assessed as necessary to respond to the emergency.
We may also use some of your information (e.g. relating to your condition and outcomes) for our audit and research purposes; however, we will ensure that your information is first anonymised and will seek Ethics Committee approval before any research is published.
Where is your personal and health information stored?
We store all personal and health information we hold on our patient management database, Nookal - a secure cloud-based data storage platform. All steps will be taken to ensure unauthorised access to this information is not possible – for example by restricted access, individual passwords and auto lock on computers.
Any written notes from the consultation are uploaded to Nookal and then destroyed in confidential waste.
How long is your personal and health information kept?
In compliance with the Health (Retention of Health Information) Regulations 1996, the Public Records Act 2005 and the University of Otago’s Disposal Authority, we are required to retain your health information for at least 10 years beginning on the day after the date on which we last provided services to you.
Once there is no longer a need or obligation for the University to retain this information, any paper or other hard files we hold will be deleted, securely destroyed or de-identified.
Access to your information and correction
You have the right to request a copy of the information that we hold about you. If you would like to ask for a copy of your information, please email pharmacy.clinic@otago.ac.nz
You may also ask us to correct or remove any information if you think it is incorrect. Please call or email the Pharmacy Clinic with your request.
Contact details
Please contact us if you have any concerns about the collection, use or disclosure of your personal and health information.
Pharmacy Clinic І He Rau Kawakawa Whare Haumanu details:
University of Otago
Ground Floor
School of Physiotherapy Building
325 Great King Street
Central Dunedin
Tel +64 3 479 8141
Email pharmacy.clinic@otago.ac.nz
You can also contact the University’s Privacy Officer:
Registrar and Secretary to Council
Email registrar@otago.ac.nz
Tel +64 3 479 8899