Enrolment – Use of Information

What Your Enrolment Information is Used For

Practices typically hold two types of information about you.

These are:

A) Non-clinical information – this is your name, your address, your contact details, your workplace, etc.

B) Clinical Information – this is what you talk to the Doctor or Nurse about in the privacy of the consult room, plus any lab tests undertaken, diagnoses made or medicines you are prescribed.

What Happens to Non-Clinical Information

Tima Health is required to pass on your Non-Clinical Information to the PHO, its administration agencies and HealthPAC (the payment arm of the Ministry of Health), this is in order to obtain the funding that gives you subsidised care.

What Happens to Clinical Information

Our health care professionals (Doctors and Nurses) make notes of what you talk to them about. These notes help them to provide good care for you (it is also a legal and ethical requirement that they do so). This information is kept on the practice’s own computers (and/or paper records). This information is not normally passed to anyone outside of the practice.

However, if you need a lab test or a prescription, or are referred to a specialist or hospital, some of your information will need to go to that other person or organisation, in order for them to be able to provide proper care for you.

Similarly, if you are part of some of our programmes (eg – Diabetes, CVD) some information will go to the PHO and the particular providers of those programmes, to help make sure these programmes are working well for you and other people. You will be asked to consent for this when you are enrolled in any such programmes.

Finally, this practice and PHO are part of a national quality improvement programme, called the PHO Performance Programme. So that we can measure how well we are caring for you and compare our services with other PHO’s, we need to electronically supply clinical information attached to your National Health Index (NHI) number but without any details of your name or address. This data will be used to produce reports for Te Whatu Ora and the Ministry of Health that do not identify you individually in any way.

Tima Health
46 Waimea Road, Nelson South, Nelson 7010
Phone: 03 548 8005