Welcome to the new BHI website. During its staged implementation, earlier reports not available on this site can be accessed on the old website.

Privacy

The Bureau of Health Information (BHI) respects an individual’s right to privacy and follows all relevant state and federal laws. This includes the Health Records Information Privacy Act 2002 (HRIP Act) and its Health Privacy Principles (HPPs), and the Privacy and Personal Information Act 1998 (PPIP Act) and its Information Protection Principles. These Acts regulate the collection, storage, use and disclosure of personal information held by government agencies. BHI does not publish any information that may identify individuals.

BHI's Privacy Management Annual Report, produced in accordance with Ministry of Health annual reporting requirements regarding privacy matters, is available here.

Further details on how NSW Health manages the health information of patients can be found in the NSW Health Privacy Leaflet for Patients, available from https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/patients/privacy/Pages/privacy-leaflet-for-patients.aspx

NSW Patient Survey Program

The Bureau of Health Information (BHI) operates the NSW Patient Survey Program to inform the public, hospitals and government about the experiences of people across a range of health services. Your feedback will be used to help improve healthcare experiences and outcomes for patients across NSW. Participation in the survey is voluntary. Any information you provide will be treated confidentially, and the health professionals who cared for you will not be able to see your responses. By returning a completed questionnaire, you are consenting to take part in the survey.

The Health Record and Information Privacy Act 2002 allows NSW Health to release limited information for the express purpose of conducting patient experience surveys. The Privacy Act allows use or disclosure of information without the consent of the person when there is a directly related secondary purpose that is within the reasonable expectations of the person.

BHI is a NSW Government agency that contracts Ipsos Public Affairs Ltd (Ipsos) to conduct the fieldwork (printing, posting and data collection) for the patient surveys. NSW Health randomly selects the patients who are sent the survey questionnaire. Using patient information supplied by NSW Health, Ipsos mails surveys to people who have recently received healthcare services in NSW.

For the purposes of mailing, the following information is made available to Ipsos for each person who receives a questionnaire:

  • survey type, e.g. outpatient, emergency patient, etc
  • hospital attended
  • local health district of hospital attended
  • title, first name and surname of patient
  • unit/street number; street/road name; suburb; state and postcode.

These details are kept confidential, used only to send out the questionnaire and are then deleted once the fieldwork is completed. However, for the period that identifiable details remain, people can contact Ipsos through the toll-free Patient Survey Helpline (1800 220 936, Monday to Friday, 9am–8pm), to ask to see their responses, or to request that some or all of their information be deleted.

BHI never reports survey responses in a way that allows individuals to be identified. When reporting the results, BHI always groups responses together and does not publicly report results if fewer than 30 patients responded to any single question.

You can explore patient survey results on BHI’s interactive Data Portal and in BHI reports.