Health research mailouts – Medicare 011-22080123

Services Australia receives a variety of requests for health research related mailouts (assisted mailouts). For example, to help with recruitment for health studies.

These requests come from:

• universities
• hospitals, and
• health research organisations

The Health Research Coordination Team supports health researchers by:

• providing them with access to health related data
• sending letters to agency customers about health research and advice
• these letters are personalised with customer address details and include a Services Australia cover letter that assures the recipient that their personal details have not been released to an external party
• sending mail packs to selected cohorts of agency customers:
• asking if they’d like to participate in various health studies
• providing important health advice

Customers:

• health data is not released without their consent
• can opt-out of receiving correspondence about health research

Services Australia and the Department of Health and Aged Care must make sure legislation and regulations allow the access, use and disclosure of data, see Approval process and Legislation for more details.

The agency:

• ensures the data the Health Research Coordination Team use and release helps to improve Australian health and welfare outcomes
• is considered to be an integral part of health research in Australia due to the wealth of health data that is held by the Medicare program

Health advice mailouts conducted on behalf of government departments/agencies:

• are targeted at specific cohorts, and
• the correspondence is usually about pandemic or disaster advice
• for example, a COVID vaccination letter was posted to consumers aged between 70-95 year olds, who had not yet been vaccinated

A mandatory review process is required for all health research mailouts and consent study requests. These requests are considered by the External Requests Evaluation Committee (EREC).

The EREC:

• are responsible for assessing requests to use the agency’s health data for research, health service planning or other purposes
• is governed by the below representatives:
• Senior Medical Advisor
• Legal and Privacy Advisors
• Representatives from Services Australia and Department of Health and Aged Care relevant business areas i.e. Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS), Repatriation Benefits Scheme (RPBS) and Australian Immunisation Register (AIR)

These requests must have approval from a Human Research Ethics Committee registered with the National Health and Medical Research Council to be considered by the EREC.

All mailouts include a Services Australia cover letter (see Resources for a link to an example) to assure recipients:

• that the agency is not associated with the campaign or study, and
• their personal information has not been released to external entities

The agency is obligated to ensure that all requests are released under the relevant legislation.

Customers can ask to be removed from future research mailouts.

The Health Research Coordination Team maintains a list of Medicare card numbers of customer who have asked to be removed from mailing lists to do with research mailouts.

This list ensures that these individuals and anyone else on their Medicare card will not receive any further letters asking to participate in health research.

If a customer wishes to be added to this opt-out list, see the Process page for how to request to add customer to the opt-out list.

Services Australia cannot legally use customer data for a purpose other than what it was collected for unless there is legislative exception.

Subsection 95(4) of the Privacy Act 1988 allows the agency to use personal information of customers without consent to conduct a mailout for medical research purposes.

This is subject to the research being:

• conducted in accordance with guidelines issued by the Chief Executive Officer of the National Health and Medical Research Council under subsection 95(1) of the Privacy Act 1988, and
• approved from a Human Research Ethics Committee

See References page for the relevant legislation that is considered when approving these requests.

The agency helps health researchers by coordinating the consented release of health data by:

• reviewing their proposed documentation
• submitting documentation to the internal approval committee
• validating signed consent forms and provision of the requested data

Data requested includes MBS, PBS, RPBS and AIR claims information.

The studies:

• cover a broad range of health research
• findings are used:
• to better understand the impacts of various illnesses and conditions, and
• to improve health outcomes for Australians