Policies | Budding Beans Psych

Budding Beans Psychology Pty Ltd ABN 17 664 920 343 (“we”, “us”, “our”) provides both Psychology and Speech Pathology services. As part of providing these services, we may collect Personal Information. We recognise the importance of your privacy and respects your right to control how your Personal Information is collected and used.

This Privacy Policy outlines how we collect, use, store, and disclose your personal information in accordance with the Australian Privacy Principles. As an entity that handles personal information, we are committed to protecting your privacy in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Health Records Act 2001 (Vic) (“Applicable Privacy Laws”). This Privacy Policy also explains how you can contact us for further information or to access and correct the personal information we hold about you, and lodge privacy complaints with us about Budding Beans Psychology or any of the Clinicians operating from it.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. All updates will be published as the Privacy Policy on our website (www.buddingbeanspsychology.com.au). Please check back from time to time to review our Privacy Policy.

In this Privacy Policy, and unless otherwise stated, “personal information” includes a reference to “health information.” “Personal information” refers to any information or opinion about a person who is identified or reasonably identifiable, as given in the Applicable Privacy Laws. “Health information” refers to any information or opinion about or related to the physical, mental, or psychological health of a person who is identified or reasonably identifiable, as given in the Applicable Privacy Laws.

What Personal Information do we collect?

Budding Beans Psychology Pty Ltd will need to collect and record Personal Information from you that is relevant to you or your child’s current situation as part of providing a psychology and speech pathology service to you or your child. This information will be a necessary part of the assessment and treatment/management that is conducted. Some provision of Personal Information is optional. However, if you do not provide us with certain types of Personal Information, we may not be able to provide our healthcare services to you.

The Personal Information that we collect and hold may include:

name, sex, date of birth, nationality, address and contact details, including your email address and telephone number;
information that you, the Clinicians, or other third parties provide to us (which may include details of about relevant health conditions, medical and mental history, current medications, images or footage of identifiable individuals);
psychological history and assessment results;
family medical history;
clinical notes, treatment records and correspondence (such as referral letters and reports) that Clinicians receive or create in the course of providing health services you;
Medicare and/or private health fund details; and
your payment and billing information, which we use to bill you for the healthcare services and to process your payments.

How do we collect Personal Information?

We receive Personal Information directly from you. This may include:

When you contact us by email or phone;
When you complete our online enquiry form or Client Intake Forms.

We receive Personal Information from your treating Clinician.
We receive Personal Information from other third party. This may include:

Through referrals from other healthcare, education, and support service professionals (e.g., GP, educators);
If you are a minor, your parent or guardian;
Your authorised representative or caregiver;
Private health fund or Medicare, in relation to billing and claim issues; and
Your emergency contact or other people who may be able to assist (e.g., close friends) in the event of an emergency.

How do we store and secure Personal Information?

We will take reasonable steps to protect your Personal Information from misuse, loss, unauthorised access and modification or disclosure. We use commercially reasonable physical, technical, and administrative measures to protect Personal Information that we hold, including, where appropriate, password protection, encryption, and SSL to protect our Site. We also implement secure electronic record-keeping systems, confidentiality agreements with all staff, regular data backups and restrict access to personal information based on role requirements. Despite taking appropriate measures to protect your Personal Information used and collected by us, please be aware that no data security measures can guarantee 100% security all the time. We cannot guarantee the security of any information transmitted to us via the internet and such transmission is at your risk. If we no longer require the use of your Personal Information, we will take reasonable steps to destroy or permanently de-identify it unless we are otherwise required by law.

We store Personal Information electronically using Practice Management Software by Halaxy. You can read about Halaxy Security on their website. https://www.halaxy.com/article/security. Personal Information may be stored electronically on our local server and by way of back up on a secure third-party data centre, located in Australia, or in physical storage at our practice.

When do we use and disclose Personal Information?

We treat your Personal Information as strictly private and confidential. We will only use or disclose it for purposes directly related to your care and treatment, or in ways that you would reasonably expect that we may use it for your ongoing care and treatment. Your Personal Information is only accessible by our employees and contractors (such as our psychologists and administrative staff) on a strict-needs basis and on a strictly confidential basis.

Personal Information collected by us will generally only be used and disclosed for the purpose it was collected. This includes maintaining your contact details and clinical records, providing you with our healthcare services and processing payments and managing billing.
We may, from time to time, use Personal Information for another purpose where it would be reasonably expected by you or if permitted by the Privacy Act, including to effectuate or enforce a transaction, procuring advice from legal and accounting firms, auditors and other consultants. We may also disclose your Personal Information in circumstances where we are compelled by Australian legislation or a court of law to do so.

We may provide Personal Information to other healthcare service providers, such as your allied health professionals, general practitioner and specialist medical practitioners. We will only supply this information with your consent, or in circumstances where it is required for the delivery of healthcare services, such as referral to another healthcare service provider, billing and liaising with government offices regarding Medicare entitlements and payments, where it is necessary to prevent or lessen a serious threat to a patient’s life, health or safety, or other reason as permitted by law.

In emergency situations we may need to disclose your personal information to your emergency contact person (if provided), emergency service providers, or other people who may be able to assist, some of whom may be outside of Australia if you undertake such travels.

From time to time, we may also need to share information with our service providers such as accountants, insurers, lawyers, auditors, professional accreditation bodies and regulators. For example, this may include:

IT service providers that we use to host our website and practice management system, to provide analytics for our website, and to manage our mailing list.
Our billing and claims management processes require the sharing of certain information in order to process payments and benefit claims. Where necessary, we may engage debt recovery service providers and provide them with the information that they reasonably require to perform their services to us.
Participating in management, funding, complaint-handling, planning, evaluation and accreditation activities, and quality assurance, incident monitoring or clinical audit activities; and
Engaging a medical expert (for a medico-legal opinion), insurer, medical defence organisation, or lawyer, for the purpose of addressing liability indemnity arrangements (such as reporting an adverse incident), legal proceedings, or for the provision of legal advice.

Telehealth Consultations

We offer telehealth consultations via secure video conferencing or phone platforms. While we use secure platforms to protect your privacy, there are still potential risks associated with telehealth, such as technical difficulties. You can ask your psychologist about these risks before your consultation.

Clinical Supervision

Psychologists and Speech Pathologists may discuss client information with supervisors or during professional consultations. This information is typically de-identified to protect client confidentiality.

Children’s Privacy Rights

The Applicable Privacy laws protect the Personal Information of all persons regardless of their age.

Persons under the age of 18 may be entitled to make privacy decisions independent of their parents, guardians and other family members if they demonstrably possess sufficient understanding and maturity to understand these decisions on their own. Where necessary, Clinicians will determine the decision-making capacity of a person under the age of 18 years, including as it relates to this Privacy Policy.

Access and Accuracy of your Personal Information

You have rights under the Applicable Privacy Laws to request access to the Personal Information that we hold about you, and to request that we correct that information. If required by law or where the information may relate to existing or anticipated legal proceedings, we may deny your request for access to your information. We will respond to your request, setting out the reasons for our refusal in writing.

You can request access to, or correction of, your personal information by contacting us at admin@buddingbeanspsychology.com.au. There is no charge for making request. However, and subject always to the Applicable Privacy Laws, we may quote a reasonable administrative charge for providing access to your information which will apply if you decide to proceed with the request.

We may ask for information to verify your identity when you make a request to access or correct personal information. If your request relates to information about someone other than you (even if this another member of your family), we will usually need to confirm your legal authority with that other person before access is granted or a correction made.

We will respond to all requests for access to, or correction of, personal information within a reasonable time (and otherwise in accordance with any timeframes required under Applicable Privacy Laws).

If request relates to your clinical records, our standard operating procedure is to handle your request in the manner directed by the relevant Clinicians from whom we seek consent. Once that consent and direction is received, we use our best endeavours to deliver the clinical records to the recipient by post or email. Clinicians may elect to deal with a request for access to clinical records without our involvement in which case your request will be handled by the Clinicians who prepared the relevant record(s).

Complaints and Enquiries

If you have any questions or complaints regarding privacy, or if at any time you believe we may have wrongfully disclosed your Personal Information or breached our Privacy Policy, please contact us at via email at admin@buddingbeanspsychology.com.au lodge your complaint in writing to:

The Director
Unit37B, 93 Wells Road,

Chelsea Heights VIC 3196

If you are not satisfied with our response, you are entitled to contact the Victorian Health Complaints Commissioner or the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.

Office of The Australian Information Commissioner

Postal: GPO Box 5288, Sydney NSW 2001

Telephone: 1300 363 992

Website: www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/privacy-complaints/lodge-a-privacy-complaint-with-us

Health Complaints Commissioner

Postal: Level 26, 570 Bourke Street, Melbourne VIC 3000

Telephone: 1300 582 113

Website: www.hcc.vic.gov.au/make-complaint

Policy Updated: 13th October 2025