Veteran Cards Privacy Collection Notice

DVA is committed to protecting your privacy and managing personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Privacy Act) and the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs).

This page explains how information about you is collected, used and disclosed under the Veteran Card arrangements.

What are Veteran Cards

Veteran Cards can be used to access medical and mental health treatment, prescription medicines in Australia. 

The benefits you can get with a Veteran Card will depend on the colour of your card:

• Veteran Gold Card gives access to treatment for all medical conditions. This card may be issued to veterans with certain types of service, war widow(er)s and some dependants.
• Veteran White Card gives access to treatment for accepted service-related conditions and may give access to mental health treatment. This card is for former members of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) with accepted conditions or certain types of service.
• Veteran Orange Card gives concessions on prescription medicines, wound care items and nutritional supplements. This card is for Commonwealth and allied veterans of the Second World War. 

See more information on the range of benefits available under each card.

Veteran Cards are also a mechanism through which health providers claim for health services delivered to eligible veterans (and other eligible persons) for which the Repatriation Commission and Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Commission accept financial responsibility. In such cases the information about you is collected from the providers or practitioners by Services Australia on DVA’s behalf.  

When you use your card, this activates a series of transfers of information, including personal and sensitive (health) information to enable payment to providers for the medical and pharmaceutical benefits provided to eligible veterans (and other eligible persons).  This is referred to in the notice you are given when you receive your card and in subsequent re-issues. That notice advises that by using your card, you agree to its terms of use, which includes your consent to the collection and transfers of your personal information, as outlined below. DVA also collects some provider information through this process including provider numbers, names and contact details of the practices as well.  

Your personal information 

We need to collect, use and disclose information including sensitive health information generated and collected through the use of your DVA Veteran Card to administer and process treatment and payments, and to provide services to you. This includes:

• collecting the information generated when you use your card for health, pharmaceutical or transport services. For example, this information can include:
  • identity details such as your full name, date of birth, and veteran card number
  • details about hospital admissions, GP, specialist, health clinic or allied health provider appointments and consultations, and day procedures, test results and pathology and other diagnostic services such as imaging.  In those instances it is possible that inferential sensitive personal information may be collected by DVA about you.
  • the type of health service you have accessed, such as medical and some dental and optical treatment, tests, scans, pathology and medical imaging. in some cases, your health provider may need to get prior approval from us. In these cases, the provider will provide relevant personal and health information to us
  • details of pharmaceutical benefits under the Repatriation Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (RPBS) or MRCA Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme
  • other services and support accessed, such as rehabilitation, counselling, community nursing, home help and care services, travel to and from medical appointments and medical aids, equipment and modifications
    
    We collect this information to verify your identity and eligibility for services and benefits accessed, provide you with support and assistance, undertake data analytics activities and create reports on Veteran Card usage for reporting and compliance purposes. If we don’t collect this personal information, we may not be able to assess your eligibility for benefits.  
• providing this information, together with associated provider and billing information to Services Australia, the agency that processes payments to your health providers/pharmacists on DVA’s behalf. Services Australia is responsible for providing services such as assessing, processing and paying claims, and capturing, recording and providing accurate transactional data in order to assist DVA with ongoing financial reconciliation processes. 
• Services Australia transfers claims information to DVA to facilitate treatment of eligible card holders and reconciliation of payments made on behalf of DVA.
• We may also use or disclose the information collected through the use of your card for public health purposes such as research and investigations, and to improve the wellbeing, treatment, services and outcomes for veterans. In some cases, you may be able to opt-out of the use of your personal information for research. See more information about DVA research and privacy.

We may also share personal information associated with the use of your card with and/or collect information from:

• medical and health professionals, hospitals, clinics, health, rehabilitation and aged care service providers to process DVA claims and provide benefits and services
• your nominated representative or authorised agent
• agents, consultants, contractors and outsourced service providers engaged by DVA to undertake certain activities and functions (note that such consultants, contractors and outsourced service providers who have access to personal information collected by DVA, or who collect personal information on behalf of DVA , have obligations to ensure they handle personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act).

Your information may be shared with other third parties with your consent, or as otherwise required or authorised by law, including the Privacy Act.

Will my personal information be disclosed or stored overseas?

DVA is not likely to disclose personal information to overseas recipients unless the information relates to:

• an incident, investigation, injury or illness sustained while overseas;
• treatment provided by an overseas practitioner; 
• the establishment of Commonwealth or allied military service; or
• the investigation of a claim by a Commonwealth or allied country.

DVA will not store your personal information overseas but may use cloud service providers as detailed in the Privacy Policy. Talk to your medical practice about how and where your medical practice and providers store your personal information.

Legislative authority

We are authorised under our portfolio legislation and the Privacy Act to collect, use and disclose a range of personal information. A full listing of the legislation we administer is set out in the Administrative Arrangements Orders.

Veteran Card arrangements are supported by Treatment Principles, which are legislative instruments determined by the Repatriation Commission and Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Commission, as well legislation administered by the Department of Health, including the National Health Act 1953, the National Health Regulation 2016 and associated Rules.  

We may use your personal information with automated decision-making systems and tools to help us provide you with the services, and undertake the activities, described here. If we use these systems and tools, we will comply with all applicable laws when doing so. Our use of these systems and tools does not affect any rights you may have to request a review of a decision we make.

More information about our functions and the services we provide can be accessed via the Who we are page on this website. This includes detailed information about the range of health care services we can assist with.

More information A number of DVA forms provide additional information regarding the purposes for which we collect health information and other uses and usual disclosure practices.

DVA Privacy Policy

DVA’s Privacy Policy explains how DVA will manage and protect your personal information. This Privacy Policy contains information about how you can access the information DVA holds about you, how you can ask DVA to correct your information and how you can make a complaint if you have concerns about how DVA has managed your information.  

For some services and programs, such as MyService and Open Arms, DVA has specific Privacy Collection Notices, which prevail for the specific program or service. In other cases, the applications and forms may have specific notices and consents as detailed in the DVA Privacy Policy.

For more information please refer to our Privacy Policy or phone 133 254 (regional callers 1800 555 254) or email privacy@dva.gov.au.