Queensland Health has a longstanding commitment to confidentiality. For our health providers, and most administrative staff, the National Privacy Principles under Information Standard 42A (IS42A) sit comfortably within professional and ethical frames of reference.
Every day approximately 40,000 patients or clients provide the Department with sensitive, and sometimes highly sensitive, personal information so that we can provide them with the best possible health care.
Queensland Health recognises that giving a health provider sensitive personal information about yourself requires a high degree of trust. Patients and clients give us information with the expectation that we will deal with it in an ethical way.
Protection of privacy is particularly important in relation to future opportunities for the health sector, for example the HealthConnect initiative (which includes electronic health records). A key pre-requisite to the success of this initiative is community confidence that patient privacy will be protected. Community confidence in e-health will only be achieved if there is confidence in the Department's commitment to privacy.
The issue of privacy is also important in relation to personal information collected and held by the Department about Queensland Health employees and our business partners.The protection of the privacy of this information is also taken seriously.
Thank you for your interest in information privacy in Queensland Health and I commend this site to you.
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