A healthcare provider can help you to register for a My Health Record. This is called assisted registration.
The healthcare provider will need to obtain your consent before helping you register for a My Health Record.
It is up to the healthcare provider to determine how it will obtain your consent, and it may choose to do this through the use of a form.
Before you provide your consent for a healthcare provider to assist you in registering for a My Health Record, read the essential information below. This information will also be helpful if you have just been through an assisted registration process, and a My Health Record has been created for you.
Essential information
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The person or healthcare provider assisting you is not acting as an agent of, or on behalf of, the My Health Record system operator.
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The Privacy Collection Notice below outlines how the My Health Record System Operator handles personal information collected in the assisted registration process.
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This website also contains information about how to manage your My Health Record, including how to manage the access, privacy and security settings of your My Health Record.
Privacy Collection Notice
When you register for a My Health Record
If a healthcare provider is helping you (and your dependants, if relevant) register for a My Health Record, we will collect, use and disclose personal information about you, and your dependants (if relevant) for the following purposes:
- To ensure that we accurately identify you and your dependants
- To check whether a My Health Record already exists for each of you
- To create a My Health Record for each of you
- To link your My Health Record to a myGov account
- To include Medicare information in your record if you wish to have that information included. Where held by Medicare, this may include Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) claims, Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) claims, Australian Organ Donor Register and Australian Immunisation Register information.
We will collect personal information about you (and your dependants, if relevant), including name, address, date of birth, gender, and Medicare number, Department of Veterans' Affairs (DVA) file number (if relevant) or, if you know it, your Individual Healthcare Identifier (IHI).
We collect this information from you (where you provide it on the application form), the healthcare provider that is helping you register, Medicare, DVA (if relevant), and the Healthcare Identifiers Service (operated by Chief Executive Medicare). Without the information we will not be able to create a My Health Record for you.
Verifying your identity
As part of verifying identities and creating a My Health Record for you, and your dependants (if relevant), we disclose personal information to Medicare, DVA (if relevant) and the Healthcare Identifiers Service.
If a healthcare provider is helping you register your child, we will also collect from you, or the healthcare provider helping you register, the number on your Medicare card associated with your dependant and will disclose that number to Medicare to confirm your relationship with your dependant. We will also collect from your healthcare provider a declaration that supports your assertion that you have parental responsibility of the relevant child.
We also collect information about your claims history from Medicare, or DVA (if relevant). We use this information to ask you questions to verify your identity. Once we have verified your identity, we will be able to link your new My Health Record to a myGov account.
Without your claims information, we will not be able to link you to a myGov account and you will not be able to access your new My Health Record online. The claims information we collect to verify your identity is not retained after we link a myGov account to your My Health Record, and we do not disclose this information to anyone.
Including past Medicare information in your My Health Record
If you consent, we will include up to two years of past Medicare information in your new My Health Record. We will also include new Medicare information in your My Health Record from time-to-time as it becomes available to Medicare. You can control who has access to this information by setting access controls, if you wish.
If you do not set access controls, any healthcare provider who treats you and who is registered with the My Health Record system will be able to view your Medicare information. You can change your mind at any time and stop, or restart, the flow of Medicare information into your My Health Record.
If your Medicare information is not included in your My Health Record, the information will not be available to healthcare providers who are treating you. If you are registering your dependant(s) for a My Health Record, please note that in accordance with the current Chief Executive Medicare policy, you will not be able to set Medicare preferences for dependants aged 14–17 years old.
Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander origin
If you choose to answer, we will collect whether you are of an Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander origin. This information will be disclosed anonymously to the Department of Health to assist in the planning and provision of appropriate and improved healthcare and services.
If you do not answer, your My Health Record will show “not stated”. Without this information we will not be able to disclose it to Health to help inform policy.
How healthcare providers use our My Health Record
Once your My Health Record has been created, treating healthcare providers may upload health and related personal information about you to your My Health Record. We will collect, use and disclose this information as part of operating the My Health Record system.
If you do not want a particular document uploaded, tell your healthcare provider – they must comply with your wishes. You can control who has access to your My Health Record by setting access controls, if you wish.
If you do not set access controls, healthcare providers who treat you and who are registered with the My Health Record system will be able to view documents that have been uploaded by your other healthcare providers.
Legal authority
The collection, use and disclosure of your and your dependants’ personal information to create a My Health Record is authorised under the My Health Records Act 2012, Healthcare Identifiers Act 2010 and Privacy Act 1988.
We will not disclose health or other personal information about you or your dependants overseas (although you and your healthcare provider can securely access your My Health Record while overseas, if necessary).
Further information
To find out how you can access and correct personal information, complain about a breach of privacy or for further details about how we manage your health and other personal information, please see our privacy policy page or contact us for further information.
