New South Wales Consolidated Acts

PUBLIC HEALTH ACT 1991 - SECT 14

14 Medical practitioner to notify certain scheduled medical conditions

(1) This section applies to a medical practitioner who:

(a) attends a person because of a Category 1 medical condition or believes on reasonable grounds that a person receiving attention from the medical practitioner suffers from a Category 2 medical condition, or

(b) as a result of any kind of post-mortem examination, believes on reasonable grounds that a person has died as a result of such a medical condition.

(2) A medical practitioner to whom this section applies in relation to a person must:

(a) as soon as practicable, record in accordance with the regulations particulars concerning the person, and

(b) keep the record for the prescribed period, and

(c) immediately after recording the particulars, send to the Director-General a certificate that relates to the particulars and is in an approved form that does not provide for the provision of information that the medical practitioner is prohibited by section 17 from disclosing, and

(d) in so far as it is within the medical practitioner’s ability to do so, provide the Director-General with any information requested by the Director-General as to the medical condition from which the person is or was suffering, not including information that the medical practitioner is prohibited by section 17 from disclosing.

(2A) The medical practitioner is not required to comply with any such requirements if:

(a) the medical practitioner is attending the person as a patient at a hospital, and

(b) the person is suffering from a notifiable disease, and

(c) the medical practitioner has been notified that the chief executive officer of the hospital has, in accordance with section 69, already provided the Director-General with the relevant information concerning the person.

In this subsection, "notifiable disease", "hospital" and "chief executive officer" have the same meanings as in section 68.

(3) Except to the extent that the regulations otherwise provide, this section applies to a person engaged in a prescribed occupation in the same way as it applies to a medical practitioner.