Patient Information

Patient Information

Your Rights

HEMS commits to providing patient care that respects your rights, as set out in the Code of Health and Disability Services Consumers’ Rights. We will:

  • Treat you with respect.
  • Never discriminate, pressure you into anything, or take advantage of you.
  • Respect your dignity and independence.
  • Treat you with reasonable care and skill and provide well-coordinated services.
  • Listen to you and give you clear information that you can understand. If you don’t understand, we will ensure you feel comfortable about asking questions.
  • Fully explain your treatment to you, including the benefits, risks, alternatives, and costs, and answer your questions honestly.
  • Support you to make your own decisions about your treatment and support you if you change your mind.
  • Strive to enable you to have a support person with you if you wish, noting that helicopters can sometimes be limited in space and weight.
  • Take your feedback, including complaints, seriously.

Your Privacy

HEMS ensure that your personal information is managed in accordance with the Privacy Act 2020 and the Health Information Privacy Code 2020.

HEMS paramedics may ask for personal information to:

  • identify patients
  • guide treatment and care
  • record health status and treatment
  • support handover to other clinical teams, for example when arriving at hospital
  • comply with our legal obligations
  • support administration of the service, such as billing.

This might include:

  • information used to identify you such as your name, address, email, phone number and NHI number  
  • information about your condition, and the care and treatment we provided
  • information about where we transported you
  • information from a hospital or another health provider
  • information from Health One(a shared care record database) when that information is relevant to your treatment.

You will be informed about what personal information we are collecting and why.

Your information is recorded and stored securely in an electronic Patient Report Form and a Missions database. We need to keep these records for 10 years.

Our privacy officer is Ken Franklin. All reasonable steps are taken to ensure the personal and health information we collect is protected against loss, unauthorised access and disclosure or any other misuse. We have several security measures, including data encryption and access controls. We follow the relevant health standards and guidelines for storing and sending information.

We may share your information if:

  • we are required to by the law
  • we are discussing your care professionally with other health professionals involved in your care, for example during a clinical handover
  • it’s necessary to avoid a serious and imminent danger to you or someone else, and if it isn’t possible to get your consent.

We also use health information for quality assurance and training, however this is de-identified.

Complaints about a breach of privacy can be made:

  • To HEMS Clinical (see Feedback instructions below)
  • To the Privacy Commissioner via their website privacy.org.nz or in writing to: The Privacy Commissioner PO Box 10094 Wellington.

Requesting Patient Information

If you would like to request patient information we hold, either for yourself or on behalf of a patient, please email [email protected].

Provision of patient information is subject to identification checks. You can:

  • seek confirmation that we hold information
  • access the information
  • correct the information.

Feedback

We value your feedback and work hard to ensure that patient experiences inform ongoing service improvements.

You can provide feedback of any nature, including suggestions and complaints. Feedback is confidential and can be provided by email [email protected] or post to PO Box 6155, Dunedin North, Dunedin.

Complaints process

HEMS NZ strives to provide excellent care to all patients. If we have fallen short, please let us know.

Complaints are received by HCL, who operate independently of HEMS paramedics. HCL will assign your complaint to a team member to investigate, report and assign actions to address the issue(s).

We will respect your wishes on whether you would like to be contacted about your complaint.

Depending on the nature of your complaint, HCL may escalate the complaint to the relevant authority.

Get Involved

Our community trust partners work closely with the community. See their websites for community events and opportunities to get involved.