Privacy Policy

The nature of the services we offer requires that we collect your personal information from time to time. In collecting your personal information, we will comply with the privacy laws of New Zealand, including in particular the Privacy Act 1993, the 12 privacy principles, and where applicable, the Health Information Privacy Code 1994. This privacy statement further details how we collect, use and store your personal information.

Collecting your personal information
We will only seek to collect personal information that is necessary for us to efficiently or effectively carry out our services.

Generally the type of personal information we would seek to collect include your name, date of birth, all types of contact information, and where relevant to our services on offer, your health information. Additional information about gender, ethnicity and previous names and/or addresses may also be requested. This type of personal information is necessary and relevant to many aspects of the services we offer – from the booking stage through to the consultation stage and after care. Contacting you to ensure that the information we have is correct is important and can help prevent adverse situations like the fraudulent use of credit cards.

Where possible, our preference is to collect your personal information from you directly. This may be done face to face or by other means, such as online or over the phone. Where we require your health information, we may ask you to authorise the transfer of such health information to us from your current and/or prior health care providers.

You are not obliged to provide us with your personal information, however without it, we would be restricted both in what services we can offer to you and the quality of the services we can offer.

Sharing your personal information
At times it may be necessary to share your personal information with other health professionals such as eye specialists, other optometrists, or your medical practitioner – or other third parties if you have asked for information to be sent. This is only ever done in the interest of patient care.

• • Other people that we may need to share personal information with may include
    your employer ( if you have asked for a report to be sent, and/or if your employer is paying for your eyecare or eyewear);
  • A teacher or educator if we have been asked to provide a report ( say, about your child’s vision)
  • Your insurance company, primarily to identify you correctly.

Please be aware that agreeing that we make a referral, or if you have made an insurance claim or asked for a report to be sent: This will mean that some personal information will be disclosed, may include information about treatments, charges and payments, current and in the past.

Keeping your information safe
As far as we are able to make it happen, we will not release, trade or share your contact details and information held with other parties who may wish to send marketing emails or use your data. However, client information may be held in cloud-based storage, and electronic data storage is vulnerable to attack, so we can only promise to do the best we can. Our staff are trained to respect confidentiality and privacy. Paper-based information collection will be stored as securely as possible for us.

We would like to send emails only to people who are happy to be contacted in that way. Please let us know if you do not wish to receive email messages from us.

Thank you for trusting us with your personal information.