Privacy Policy

Last Updated: July 2026

Mountain Care Psychology (ABN: 31 692 590 119) (referred to as “we”, “us”, or “our”) is committed to protecting your privacy and managing your personal and health information securely. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and safeguard your information when you visit our website www.mountaincarepsychology.com.au (“the Website”), and purchase goods or services from us. We are bound by the legal requirements of the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) set out in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).

Information Types

According to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, “personal” information refers to information that could identify an individual. For the purposes of this policy, “Personal Information” may include (but is not limited to): your name, signature, address, phone number, date of birth, sensitive information (described below), internet protocol (IP) addresses, payment and billing information, images or footage of identifiable individuals, and/or your location information.

According to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, “Sensitive Information” may include information or an opinion regarding an individual’s racial or ethnic origin, political opinions or associations, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership or associations, sexual orientation or practices, criminal record, health or genetic information, or some aspects of biometric information.

What information we collect and how we collect it

When you visit our website, we may automatically collect information that may include or be combined with personal information, including:

• IP addresses

• browser type

• device information

• the page used to find our site

• pages visited and duration of visit

We may use this information to better understand website usage, service provision, and to improve functionality.

Other ways in which your Personal Information and Sensitive Information may be collected include:

• information that you directly provide when you submit enquiries, complete online forms (e.g., patient registration, consent, and questionnaires etc.), email or text, complete psychological tests, or when you interact with our staff (e.g., your psychologist or administrative staff)

• information that you provide in session with your psychologist

• video and/or audio surveillance of various areas of our premises as permitted by relevant legislation

• information provided to us by other health practitioners such as your General Practitioner (GP) or psychiatrist when they provide referrals, medical reports, or other correspondence

• information provided to us from other sources such as lawyers, employers, or insurance companies through correspondence or reports

• on occasion (and only where you consent), information provided by another person or party where this is relevant to your care (e.g., a carer or support person)

For existing clients, our website may also link to an online booking portal powered by Zanda Health. If you choose to book an appointment online, the information that you input (such as your name, contact details, and appointment preferences) is collected directly into our encrypted practice management database through Zanda Health.

We collect Sensitive Information where this information is reasonably necessary in order for us to provide services to you, with your consent.

If we receive Personal or Sensitive Information that we did not request, we will determine whether we could have collected that information under the Privacy Act. If we could not have collected the information and it is lawful and reasonable to do so, we will take reasonable steps to destroy or de-identify the information as soon as practicable and in accordance with APP 4.

We will not adopt any government related identifiers (e.g., your Medicare number) as your identifier in our records.

Consequence of not providing personal information

Psychologists are required to keep clear and accurate client records as part of their professional obligations. If you do not wish for your Personal and/or Sensitive Information to be collected, we may not be able to provide goods or services to you. Please discuss any concerns you have with your psychologist.

Why we collect, hold, use, and disclose Personal and Sensitive information

Generally, your Personal and Sensitive Information is treated with confidentiality and only used and disclosed in line with the purpose for which it was collected. This may include processing enquiries, providing goods and/or services, maintaining necessary records, and processing payments and/or rebates (e.g., through Services Australia/Medicare). Your information will be retained in order to document what happens during sessions and to enable your psychologist to provide a relevant and informed psychological service to you. This information and record keeping is a legally required and necessary part of the services provided, and guides treatment.

On occasion, we may use your information for another purpose that is permitted by the Privacy Act or for which you might reasonably expect us to use it, such as to effectuate or enforce a transaction, to procure advice from legal or accounting firms, auditors, or other consultants.

Where you provide prior consent and approval, we may provide Personal and/or Sensitive Information to:

• another agency or professional (such as your GP, psychiatrist, or lawyer)

• relevant billing or government offices (such as Services Australia/Medicare or another third party funder).

• Another person or party (e.g., a parent or carer, employer, insurer)

Please note that if you are accessing Medicare rebates through the Better Access scheme, we are required to provide certain correspondence and updates to your referrer, and will request your consent to do so as part of our intake process.

There are times where we may release your information without obtaining your consent, such as:

• where we are authorised or required by law to do so, such as in the event of a subpoena, mandatory reporting, or other reasons permitted by law.

• where we believe that disclosure may prevent or lessen a risk of serious harm to a person’s life, health, or safety.

Should this be required, we generally endeavour to provide you with an opportunity to discuss this with us where reasonably (and legally) possible.

We may use and share aggregate or non-personally identifying information for market analysis, research, marketing, or other purposes. This might include calculating averages or other statistics to help us understand the types of clients we see and allow us to better plan professional development (e.g., the most common reasons clients attend out practice are for depression vs. anxiety vs. trauma, on average clients attend X number of sessions, the average improvement in outcome scores following completed treatment etc). We may also reach out to ask if you would like to provide feedback so that we can continue to improve the care that we provide (you are also welcome to email us at info@mountaincarepsychology.com.au with feedback or suggestions).

Psychologists are required to consult and receive supervision from colleagues from time to time, in order to meet registration requirements and to provide high standards of care. If your information is shared in this context, all care is taken to deidentify your information in such a way that you remain anonymous.

Information we don’t collect or engage with

We take your privacy and safety very seriously and set high standards for our ethical conduct. We have policies in place to ensure that we abide by the psychologist Code of Conduct and other legal obligations to help keep both clients and psychologists safe. These include rules regarding how we advertise and conduct ourselves online, as well as rules that we must avoid “multiple relationships” with clients (even past clients from a long time ago).

Social Media

Our psychologists and staff do not accept friend, contact, or follow requests on personal social media pages, as this may compromise confidentiality and/or blur boundaries that may lead to “multiple relationships”. We do not search for clients on the internet or social media, and do not collect information about you using these forums. You are welcome to follow public pages belonging to the clinic (Mountain Care Psychology), but please be mindful that this may limit your own confidentiality and note that we are unable to “follow back”.

Business Reviews

Our online profiles (e.g., our google business page etc.) exist solely for directory purposes, and are not an invitation to review nor an advertisement. We are prohibited by law (section 133 of the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law) from using testimonials or reviews in our advertising, and note that public reviews may compromise your confidentiality. For this reason, we can not respond to any reviews (whether they are positive or negative) because we can not confirm nor deny whether a reviewer is a client.

The Real World

We are mindful that we operate in a small (but beautiful) community. You may encounter your psychologist or other Mountain Care Psychology staff outside of session, in person or online. We know this can be awkward, like seeing a teacher outside of school! In general, we try our best to act as though you are a stranger, unless you say hello first. This helps to protect your privacy and to avoid multiple relationships or blurring boundaries. During your initial intake appointment we’ll try to check in regarding how you prefer to manage these encounters, but feel free to let us know your preference at any time.

Information Storage and Security

We take the security of your information seriously, and take reasonable steps to protect your information from misuse, interference and loss, unauthorised access, modification, or disclosure. We use commercially reasonable physical, technical, and administrative measures to protect Personal and Sensitive Information that we hold. We use password protection and MFA, use encryption, protect devices with industry-standard antivirus software, and use SLL to protect our site. Your information is accessed only by your psychologist and the authorised staff or providers of the practice, as required, in accordance with the practice’s policies and procedures. We adhere to the Essential Eight mitigation strategies including patching applications and operating systems, using multi-factor authentication, restricting administrative privileges, using application control, restricting Microsoft Office macros, user application hardening, and regular backups.

Your information is stored electronically using Zanda Health, which is an Australian cloud-based electronic system that is externally audited, certified to ISO 27001 standards, and aligns with the Australian Privacy Principles. Data is hosted and backed up in Australia where feasible, and securely encrypted while in transit and at rest. Zanda has some offshore servers and staff, and it is possible that your data may be sent, stored, or accessed offshore, particularly during urgent or after-hours events where Zanda provides support from team members based overseas. However, these staff are subject to the same training, compliance obligations, and background checks. Zanda ensures compliance with the Australian Privacy Principle (APP) 8 before granting any access, including requiring that all staff handle data in accordance with Australian privacy standards.

If we no longer need personal or sensitive information and are no longer required to keep this information, we take reasonable steps to delete or de-identify the information. Note that in Australia, psychology records must be kept for a minimum of 7 years for adult clients (or until the client is 25 years old for child clients).

Data Breach Policy

While we take commercially reasonable measures to protect personal and sensitive information that is collected and used by us, please note that no data security measures can guarantee 100% security all of the time. We cannot guarantee the security of any information transmitted to us via the internet and such transmission is at your risk. You are responsible for maintaining the secrecy and security of your passwords or other account information which you may use to access our client portal on Zanda or other apps or services.

If we suspect that a data breach has occurred, we will undertake an assessment in accordance with the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme. If we determine that there has been an eligible breach, we will notify you as soon as reasonably practicable. If the breach relates to the My Health Records Act, we may disclose your personal information to the My Health Records System Operator under s 73A of that Act.

Your Access and Accuracy

At any stage, you can request to access your personal information kept on file. Your psychologist may discuss the contents with you and/or give you a copy, subject to the exceptions in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).  If your psychologist is satisfied that your personal information is inaccurate, out of date or incomplete, reasonable steps will be taken in the circumstances to ensure that this information is corrected. All requests by you for access to or correction of personal information held about you should be lodged with your psychologist. All written requests for access to information will be responded to in writing within 30 days and an appointment will be made if necessary for clarification purposes.

Telehealth

We offer telehealth options (e.g., videoconferencing) to allow you more flexibility in attending your therapy sessions. If you choose to attend via telehealth, your privacy is still important and you will need to find a quiet and private space to join the session from, where you won’t be overheard or interrupted. Please also note that any form of communication via the internet is potentially vulnerable and is limited by the security of the technology and devices used by all involved. We take reasonable steps to secure your information as outlined elsewhere in this document, but take no responsibility for the security of your own device or technology used to access sessions. Please ensure that your device is secure, all software is patched, and you have up to data antivirus and malware protection. The Australian Signals Directorate offer information regarding how to protect yourself online.

Email Communication

As a small business without full time administrative support, email is our preferred form of communication regarding booking enquiries and appointments.

However, if you choose to contact us via the email address listed on this website, please note:

• Privacy risks: While we take reasonable steps to secure our digital environment, standard email is not a secure method of communication. Please do not send sensitive personal or clinical information via general email. If you provide your contact details, we will reach out to discuss intake processes. This may include an initial intake telephone call, and various online forms which are completed via our secure client administration system (Zanda).

• No immediate response: Our email inbox is not continuously monitored and your psychologist will only receive your correspondence on days they are in the office. Do not use email to request urgent clinical help or crisis intervention.

• Spam and abuse: You must not use our email addresses to send unsolicited commercial electronic messages (spam), defamatory material, or malicious software.

Crisis Services

Please note that we are not a crisis service. If you are experiencing an immediate mental health crisis, or are concerned about your safety or the safety of someone else, please call emergency services on 000 or attend your nearest hospital Emergency Department if safe to do so.

If it is not an immediate emergency, you may consider attending a community-led Safe Space if there is one available in your primary health network area. Roses in the Ocean currently offer an interactive map of Safe Space locations.

A variety of helplines and other services are also available:

• Lifeline Australia (13 11 14) offer 24/7 crisis support

• 13 YARN (12 92 76) offer 24/7 crisis support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples

• MensLine Australia (1300 78 99 78) offer 24/7 telephone support for men

• 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732) offer 24/7 support for people impacted by domestic, family, or sexual violence

• Kids Helpline (1800 55 1800) offer 24/7 telephone counselling for young people aged 5 to 25 years.

Lifeline also offer BeyondNow, an online resource to help people who experience suicidality (but are not currently in an emergency) to construct a Safety Plan.

Cookies and Analytics

Our website is built using the Squarespace platform. We use standard, functional website cookies to ensure our site operates securely and loads correctly for visitors. We also use Squarespace’s internal analytics tools to monitor general site traffic, such as the number of visitors and which pages are viewed. This data includes technical metadata (such as IP addresses and device types) but does not identify you by name. We do not use tracking pixels, marketing cookies, or behavioral advertising. This statistical data is used solely to improve our website layout. You can opt out of these cookies at any time by rejecting them on our website cookie banner or by adjusting your browser settings.

If you choose to use the online client portal powered by Zanda Health to manage your appointments or complete forms, the system uses technical browser cookies to securely manage your session. These cookies are strictly functional and are used to remember your display preferences, maintain your secure active login status (such as when you select 'Remember me'), and ensure your data transfers safely into our encrypted database. These cookies do not track your behavior across the broader internet or feed into advertising networks.

Third Party Websites/Embedded Content

Our site may contain links to external websites and embedded content from other websites, such as mental health resources, directories, or government bodies. We may also discuss such resources with you during therapy. Please note that access to and use of such external resources and websites are not governed by this Privacy Policy (for Mountain Care Psychology), but are instead governed by the privacy policies of the external websites/agencies/organisations which own and operate those resources and websites. We are not responsible for the privacy and information practices of external or third party resources or websites.

Offshore Data Use, Disclosure, or Transfer

In general, we endeavour for all information storage and use to occur within Australia. However, where needed we may use, disclose, or transfer your information to an overseas recipient where this is relevant to the purposes for which the information was collected. Overseas recipients may include employees, contractors, or external service providers such as information technology service providers (e.g., data management providers, cloud storage providers, clinical record manager providers). We will do so where we reasonably believe that the overseas recipient is subject to a law, binding scheme, or contractual agreement that is substantially similar to the way that the Australian Privacy Principles protect your information. For example, Zanda Health typically provides support to Australian customers from Australia-based support staff. However, there may be times (e.g., urgent or after-hours support requests) where Zanda Health provides support from international staff who access or process data from outside Australia. However, Zanda Health has advised that they ensure compliance with Australian Privacy Principle 8 before granting any access.

Other circumstances where we may use, disclose, or transfer your information to an overseas recipient may include specific instances where you provide explicit consent, where we are required to by law or international agreement, where this may lessen or prevent a serious threat to life, health , or safety, where information relates to a person who has been reported as missing, or where necessary for diplomatic/consular purposes.

Marketing Emails

If you provided consent upon intake, we may send you emails that contain marketing information about products and services offered by us, in accordance with the Spam Act 2004 (Cth) and including an option to ask us to stop sending you these marketing emails (which we will update on our system). We will never share your information to other services or organisations for marketing purposes. If you believe that we have made a mistake, please let us know so that we can rectify this.

Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will post the updated version to our site including the date updated, and encourage you to occasionally check the current version. Your continued use of our site and services indicates your acceptance of the current policy at the time.

Questions and Concerns

If you have a question or concern about this privacy policy or our management of your personal information, please contact us at info@mountaincarepsychology.com.au and we will reach out. You may also lodge your complaint in writing to:

Dr Ann Martin

Mountain Care Psychology

PO BOX 170

SPRINGWOOD NSW 2777

We take your privacy extremely seriously and prioritise best-practices in the collection, holding, use, and disclosure or transfer of your information, even where this may be more costly or time consuming for our business, because we want you to feel safe and assured that we are treating your information as cautiously as we would our own (or more so). If you have a question or concern, we endeavour to be helpful and resolve any concerns or queries in a timely manner. We are also happy to provide you with a copy of the Australian Privacy Principles, which describe your rights and how your personal information should be handled.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you are entitled to contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner by telephone on 1300 363 992 or in writing at Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, GPO Box 5288, Sydney, NSW 2001.