Privacy Statement
DEVENISH PRACTICE
Devenish Practice aims to ensure the highest standard of medical care for our patients. To do this we keep records about you, your health and the care we have provided or plan to provide to you.
Managing Your Information
• In order to provide for your care, we need to collect and keep information about you and your health on our records.
• We retain your information securely.
• We will only ask for and keep information that is necessary. We will attempt to keep it as accurate and up-to-date as possible. We will explain the need for any information we ask for if you are not sure why it is needed.
• We ask you to inform us about any relevant changes that we should know about. This would include such things as any new treatments or investigations being carried out that we are not aware of. Please also inform us of change of address and telephone numbers.
• All persons in the practice (not already covered by a professional confidentiality code) sign a confidentiality agreement that explicitly makes clear their duties in relation to personal health information and the consequences of breaching that duty.
• Access to patient records is regulated to ensure that they are used only to the extent necessary to enable administrative staff to perform their tasks for the proper functioning of the practice.
We will only ever use or pass on your information if there is a genuine need to do so. We will not disclose information about you to third parties without your permission unless there are exceptional circumstances, such as when the law requires.
To protect your confidentiality, we will not normally disclose any medical information about you over the telephone unless we are sure that we are talking to you. This means that we will not disclose information to your family, friends and colleagues about any medical matters at all, unless we know that we have your consent to do so.
Disclosure of Information to Other Health and Social Professionals
We may need to pass some of this information to other health and social care professionals in order to provide you with the treatment and services you need. Only the relevant part of your record will be released. These other professionals are also legally bound to treat your information with the same duty of care and confidence that we do.
Below is a list of organisations that we may share your information with:
• NHS Hospitals;
• Dentists, Opticians and Pharmacies;
• Private Sector Providers (eg private hospitals);
• Voluntary Sector Providers who are directly involved in your care;
• Ambulance Service;
• Clinical Commissioning Groups;
• GP Out of Hours Service.
We may also share your information, with your consent, and subject to strict sharing protocols, about how it will be used, with:
• Local authority departments, including social care and health (formerly social services);
• Education, Housing and Public Health;
• Police and Fire Services.
Disclosures Required or Permitted under Law
• The law provides that in certain instances personal information (including health information) can be disclosed, for example, in the case of infectious diseases.
• Disclosure of information to Employers, Insurance Companies and Solicitors.
• In general, work related Medical Certificates from your GP will only provide a confirmation that you are unfit for work with an indication of when you will be fit to resume work. Where it is necessary to provide additional information we will discuss that with you. However, certificates of incapacity for work must include the medical reason you are unfit to work.
• In the case of disclosures to insurance companies or requests made by solicitors from your records we will only release the information with your signed consent.
Use of Information for Training, Teaching and Quality Assurance
• It is usual for GPs to discuss patient case histories as part of their continuing medical education or for the purpose of training GPs and/or medical students. In these situations the identity of the patient concerned will not be revealed.
• In other situations, however, it may be beneficial for other doctors within the practice to be aware of patients with particular conditions and in such cases this practice would only communicate the information necessary to provide the highest level of care to the patient.
Use of Information for Research, Audit or Quality Assurance
• It is usual for patient information to be used for these purposes in order to improve services and standards of practice. In general, information used for such purposes is done in an anonymous manner with all personal identifying information removed.
• Please remember that the quality of the patient service provided can only be maintained and improved by training, teaching, audit and research.
Right to Access to your Health Information
The General Data Protection Regulation allows you to find out what information about you is held on computer and in manual records. This is known as “right of subject access” and applies to personal information held about you. If you want to see the information about you that the practice holds:
• you will need to make a written request to the practice;
• we are required to respond to you within 1 month;
• you will need to give adequate information (for example, full name, address, date of birth, etc);
• you will be required to provide ID before any information is released to you.
Transferring to another Practice
If you decide at any time and for whatever reason to transfer to another practice we will facilitate that decision by making available your medical records to Business Services Organisation (BSO) who in turn will then transfer your records to your new doctor.
Notification
The Data Protection Act 1998 requires organisations to register a notification with the Information Commissioner to describe the purposes for which they process personal and sensitive information.
This information is publicly available on the Information Commissioners Office website – www.ico.org.uk.
The practice is registered with the Information Commissioners Office (ICO).
Who is the Data Controller?
The Data Controller, responsible for keeping your information secure and confidential is “Devenish Medical Practice”.
Complaints
Should you have any concerns about how your information is managed by the Practice, then please contact our Practice Manager, who will be able to assist you.
If you are still unhappy following a review by the Practice you can then complain to the Information Commissioners Office (ICO). Tel: 0303 123 1113 or www.ico.org.uk
Changes to this Privacy Notice
We keep our privacy notice under regular review.