Choosing options to restrict access to your My Health Record

Once you get past the ordeal of logging into My Health Record through MyGov, the MyHR system is quite easy to use.

Click the Privacy & Security tab and you will see four options for limiting access to your MyHR.

1. Giving access to a nominated representative (e.g. a carer who helps you access health care)
2. Health care organisation access
3. Document access
4. Access history

There are two ways of controlling who can see the contents of your MyHR.

1. When a new document is uploaded, you log into your MyHR, check out what the document is about, and use Document Access to restrict which organisations can access the new document. This function is useful if a health care provider has uploaded something you would have preferred to keep confidential.
2. You use Health care organisation access to restrict access to providers who enter the code you give them.

Both options come with different limitations and risks:

1. You may not notice when a document has been uploaded and miss out on the opportunity to restrict access to it. Or you may have lots of documents in your record already, making it tiresome to restrict access to them one by one.
2. When you restrict access to your record and then give your access code to Dr A, all her colleagues at the same organisation also gain access to your record.

You can use the Access History page to find out which organisations have accessed your record in the past 12 months.