Privacy Policy

1. What is Personal Information?

Personal information is any information about an identifiable individual that we may collect in the provision of psychological services. Personal information includes three broad categories that relates to an individual’s:

  1. personal characteristics or demographics (e.g., gender, age, income, home address or phone number, ethnic background, family status)
  2. health (e.g., health history, health conditions, health services received by them)
  3. activities and views (e.g., religion, politics, opinions expressed by an individual, an opinion or evaluation of an individual)

 2. Who we are

Our organization, McLean Psychology Centre (MPC), includes staff from the following areas: clinical practice, reception, and bookkeeping.  We also have a psychology student volunteer, a website manager and a housecleaner who may, in the course of their duties, have limited access to personal information we hold.  We have written confidentiality agreements with them to ensure they follow appropriate privacy principles to safeguard your health information.

3. We Collect Personal Information (Primary Purposes)

Like all providers of psychological services, we collect, use and disclose personal information in order to serve our clients. For our clients, the primary purposes for collecting personal information are as follows: to obtain a comprehensive history to identify mental health needs and treatment options available, to provide psychological services (formal assessment and/or treatment), to track treatment progress over time, and for communication/follow-up/consultation purposes. Examples of the type of personal information we collect for these purposes include the following: contact information, and relevant individual, family, social, physical, and mental health information as deemed necessary to provide appropriate service.

For contract staff (e.g. practice assistant, bookkeeper), our primary purposes for collecting personal information are as follows: to facilitate appointment scheduling and communication between client and practitioner, invoicing of 3rd parties and other payment-related matters.

4. We Collect Personal Information (Secondary Purposes)

 Like most organizations, we also collect, use and disclosed information for the purposes related to or secondary to our primary purposes. The most common examples of our related and secondary purposes are as follows:

  • To invoice clients for services that were not paid for at the time.
  • Psychologists in supervised or autonomous practice are regulated by the College of Psychologists of Ontario who may inspect our records and interview our psychologists as a part of their regulatory activities in the public interest. The College of Psychologists of Ontario has its own strict privacy obligations.
  • The cost of some services provided by the organization to clients is paid for by third parties (e.g. private insurance, WSIB, First Nations and Inuit Health Branch, Canadian Forces). These third-party payers often have your written consent or legislative authority to direct us to collect and disclose to them certain information in order to determine whether a client is entitled to this funding (e.g. Canadian Forces identification, First Nations identification).

5. Protecting Personal Information

We at McLean Psychology Centre ensure that your personal information is physically and electronically secure.

  • Paper files and information, and electronically stored files are kept in a locked and restricted area. If a file is removed it is kept under strict and supervision until returned to its usual locked and restricted area.
  • Electronic hard drives or computers are stored in supervised and secure areas, and are encrypted with passwords.
  • We have a strict confidentiality agreement with those who have access to any personal information being held; e.g. the practice assistant, volunteer assistant and bookkeeper.
  • Paper information is sent through sealed envelopes through Canada Post and marked confidential.
  • Faxed information is from our secure, confidential fax to the recipient’s similarly secure fax setting.
  • All members of McLean Psychology Centre access personal information only as necessary to fulfill their duties, and in accordance with this privacy policy.

6. Limits of Confidentiality

McLean Psychology Centre follows the confidentiality requirements of College of Psychologists of Ontario. We are highly committed to keeping your personal information confidential. Limits to the protection of private information include: disclosure to Children’s Aid Society, College of Psychologists of Ontario, and to Court subpoenas. In for the following circumstances confidentiality must be broken due to legal or ethical obligations:

  • If you intend to seriously harm yourself or someone else
  • If you share information about a child under the age of 16 who is going through or is at risk of any kind of abuse or neglect
  • If you report that you have been sexually abused by a member of a Regulated Health Care Profession
  • If it is a subpoena by a court of law
  • Also, because we are regulated by the College of Psychologists of Ontario (CPO), they can check our records as part of the Quality Assurance Program.

 7. Retention and Destruction of Health Care Information

At MPC we retain client records for a minimum of 10 years to ensure that we can answer any questions that you may have for us after you receive our services. We also do that to follow the standards of record retention and destruction as outlined by the College of Psychologists of Ontario. We keep client files for at least 10 years past the date of last contact for adults and for child clients, 10 years past the date at which they would turn 18years of age. We destroy paper files containing personal information by shredding and we destroy electronic information by deleting it and, when the hardware is discarded, we ensure that the hard drive is physically destroyed.

8. You Can Access Your Information

You have the right to see what personal information is on your file; you only need to ask. (There is a very rare exclusion exception when the psychologist feels there is information that could cause harm to you or someone else, and you would be notified of this in a timely manner).

You may ask for access to your file in person or in writing. If you believe there is a mistake in the factual information on your file, you can ask for it to be corrected. (This does not apply to a professional opinion.) We will either correct it, or we may ask for verifying information first. We can also notify anyone to whom the information was previously sent (e.g. your lawyer, insurance company) of this correction. If there is a difference of opinion about factual information, we will add a brief statement from you to the file, and again will forward that to anyone else who received the earlier information with your consent.

Raw data and copyrighted test protocols from psychological assessments may also be omitted from the record available to the client.

 9. Email and Website Privacy

  1. The information contained on this Website is for general information. McLean Psychology Centre shall not be liable for the accuracy or timeliness of the material contained on this website. McLean Psychology Centre shall not be liable for any damages for the reader’s use or reliance on any information found on this site.
  1. Any email communication sent to McLean Psychology Centre, by way of this website or otherwise, may not be secure.  As such, do not send information that is sensitive or confidential in nature.

 If you are in crisis, do not sent an email – go directly to the nearest hospital emergency department or call 911.

  1. Email communication sent to McLean Psychology Centre by way of this website does not create any type of relationship with any staff member at McLean Psychology Centre.
  1. This site contains links to other websites. These links are provided solely for convenience purposes. McLean Psychology Centre does not control and is not responsible for any of these third party sites or their content. Nor does McLean Psychology Centre endorse these sites or the information contained on the sites.

Use of Personal Information

Our contact form requires you to enter personal information. Personal information includes, but is not limited to, name, telephone number, and email address. By entering this information, you consent for us to have and use this information to contact you. This information is used exclusively by McLean Psychology Centre. We do not sell or otherwise pass on your personal information to any third party.

Use of cookies

This website uses Google Analytics to collect visitor data and analyze internet traffic on our site. This information helps us improve our website. When you visit our site, the pages that you look at, and a short text file called a cookie, are downloaded to your computer. A cookie is used to store small amounts of information. This information is collected for traffic analysis only. The cookie does not contain personal details. Depending on the browser that you use, you can set your preferences to block/ refuse cookies, and/ or notify you before they are placed. We do not sell, give, or trade the statistics to any 3rd parties for data-mining or marketing purposes.

This statistical information we collect is used for internal review and to improve the content of our website and our services. It is not shared with other organizations for commercial purposes. We do not partner with or have special relationships with any ad server companies.

External Website Links 

This website contains links to other websites that have their own privacy policies, which may differ from our privacy policy.

We have no control over, do not review and are not responsible for the privacy practices of or content displayed on other websites. We encourage you to be aware when you leave our Website and to read the privacy policies of each and every third party website that collects information from you.

10. Do you have questions or concerns?

If you have any questions or concerns please contact our Information Officer:

Dr. Heather McLean

She can be reached at:

McLean Psychology Centre

157 High Street
Sutton, ON L0E 1R0
289-763-7076

contact@mcleanpsych.com

She will attempt to help address any questions or concerns you might have.
You can also send a formal complaint about our privacy practices, which will be addressed promptly, with a response in a formal written decision with reasons outlined.

This policy is made under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. The Information and Privacy Commissioner can also be reached at:

Information and Privacy Commissioner

112 Kent Street
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 1H3
Phone 1 800-282-1376

Fax (613) 947-6850
www.privcom.gc.ca

To download a printable version of this policy for your own records, please click here.