Privacy notice

Introduction

The Health and Social Care Act 2012 invests statutory functions on GP practices to promote and provide the health service in England, improve quality of services, reduce inequalities, conduct research, review performance of services and deliver education and training. To do this, we will need to process your information in accordance with current data protection legislation to:

  • Protect your vital interests
  • Pursue our legitimate interests as a provider of medical care, particularly where the individual is a child or a vulnerable adult
  • Perform tasks in the public’s interest
  • Deliver preventative medicine, medical diagnosis, medical research
  • Manage the health and social care system and services

What is this privacy notice about?

Privacy notice or fair processing notice, includes the conditions which have to be met for any activity involving personal data or special categories of personal data to be lawful. Being transparent and providing accessible information to individuals about how an organisation will use their personal information is a key element of Data Protection Legislations. The most common way to provide this information is in a practice privacy notice (PPN).

This PPN is part of our programme to make the data processing activities we are carrying out, in order to make our healthcare obligations transparent.

The PPN tells you about the information we collect and hold about you, the legal basis for collecting and holding the information, what we do with it, how we keep it secure (confidential), who we might share it with and what your rights are in relation to your information.

Types of information we use

We use the following types of information/data:

Personal data or sensitive personal/special categories of personal data, such as:

  • Demographics – name, address, date of birth, postcode, NHS number.
  • Racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, or trade union membership, genetic data, biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying a natural person, medical/health data, sexual life or sexual orientation data.
  • Pseudonymised – about individuals but with identifying details (such as name or NHS number) replaced with a unique code.
  • Anonymised – about individuals but with identifying details removed.
  • Aggregated – anonymised information grouped together so that it doesn’t identify individuals.

What we use your personal data and special categories of personal data (known as or sensitive personal) for

We use and share information about you in a number of ways. These include:

Primary uses, information from your GP medical record which can be made available to other NHS and public sector organisations, including doctors, nurses and care professionals in order to help them make the best-informed decision and provide you with the best possible direct care delivery.

Secondary uses, information from your GP medical record involves extracting identifiable data and (usually) sharing that data with other NHS organisations, for the purpose of indirect care. Examples include using your information for research, auditing, and healthcare planning (population health management).

Organisations we share your personal information with

We share information about you with other GPs, NHS acute or mental health trusts, local authority, community health providers, pharmacists, commissioning organisations, medical research organisations and some specific non NHS organisations for the purposes of direct and indirect care delivery of care.

We are required under the law to provide you with the following information how we process your personal data, the purpose of proposing, recipient/categories of your personal data, the identity of our Data Protection Officer (DPO), how long we retain personal information about you, the legal basis and justification for the processing, and your right to view, request access copies of your personal information, or object to the processing.

What is local record sharing?

Your GP medical record is held on our secure clinical system. This clinical system allows for local record sharing with other healthcare providers who are commissioned in your area to provide care (e.g. acute hospitals, mental and community health). Through this record sharing, clinicians are able to see clinical information entered by other organisations who are party to the local record sharing agreement.

This local sharing is used to provide direct patient care for services such as continued extended access, home visits, universal offers, musculoskeletal service, ‘GP at the front door’ and other neighbourhood services across the local borough. We run our services in line with the local care delivery strategy and the NHS STP.

It also enables specific GPs to identify their patients with highly complex, multiple morbidity and/or frailty, who might benefit from targeted multi-disciplinary team support as part of case management and care planning (the “case finding purpose”).

How will my information be made available?

The information is accessed in real time and on demand, meaning that data from your GP record is neither extracted, nor uploaded, nor sent anywhere. The data remains within your GP clinical system supplier’s database and users are allowed read-view access only. If you have any concerns regarding your clinical system supplier’s local record sharing, you can opt out by speaking to your GP surgery team.

What do we use anonymised data for?

We use anonymised data to plan health care services. Specifically, we use it to:

  • Check the quality and efficiency of the health services we provide
  • Prepare performance reports on the services we provide
  • Review the healthcare we provide in order they are of the highest standard

Details of data linkage with other datasets

Data may be de-identified and linked so that it can be used to improve health care and development and monitor NHS performance. Where data is used for these statistical purposes, stringent measures are taken to ensure individual patients cannot be identified.

When analysing current health services and proposals for developing future services it is sometimes necessary to link separate individual datasets to be able to produce a comprehensive evaluation. This may involve linking primary care GP data with other data such as secondary uses service (SUS) data (inpatient, outpatient and A&E). In some cases there may also be a need to link local datasets which could include a range of acute-based services such as radiology, physiotherapy, audiology etc, as well as mental health and community-based services such as Improving access to psychological therapies (IAPT), community nursing, podiatry etc. When carrying out this analysis, the linkage of these datasets is always done using a unique identifier that does not reveal a person’s identity.

We ensure that the data processor is legally and contractually bound to operate and prove security arrangements are in place where data that could or does identify a person are processed.

What safeguards are in place to ensure data that identifies me is secure?

We only use information that may identify you in accordance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation 2016. This legislation requires us to process personal data only if there is a lawful basis for doing so and that any processing must be fair and lawful.

We also ensure the information we hold is kept in secure locations, restrict access to information to authorised personnel only, protect personal and confidential information held on equipment such as laptops with encryption (which masks data so that unauthorised users cannot see or make sense of it).

Our appropriate technical and security measures include:

  • The ability to ensure ongoing confidentiality, integrity, availability and resilience of our systems;
  • The ability to quickly restore availability and access to personal information in the event of a physical or technical incident and
  • A process regularly testing, assessing and evaluating the effectiveness of security measures, and ensure they comply with the concept of privacy by design and default.

The NHS digital code of practice on confidential information applies to all of our staff, and they are required to protect your information, inform you of how your information will be used, and allow you to decide if and how your information can be shared. All practice staff are trained to ensure information is kept confidential.

We are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) as a data controller and collects data for a variety of purposes. A copy of the registration is available through the ICO website. You can search by our practice name or ICO Data Protection Register number Registration number: Z318566X.

What are your rights?

Where information from which you can be identified is held, you have the:

  • Right of access to view or request copies of the records.
  • Right to rectification of inaccurate personal data or special categories of personal data.
  • Right to restriction of the processing of your data where accuracy of the data is contested, processing is unlawful or where we no longer need the data for the purposes of the processing.
  • Right to object to any automated individual decision-making.
  • Right to data portability by requesting the data which you provided to us (not data generated by us) in a structured, commonly used machine readable format. Your right to portability applies only where:
    • Data is processed by automated means
    • You provided consent to the processing
    • The processing is necessary for the fulfilment of a contract

These rights will only apply where we cannot demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds for continued processing of your personal data for the purposes of direct provision of care, and compliance with a legal obligation to which we are subject.

Your right to erasure (right to be forgotten) will only apply where you had given ‘consent’ to process your personal health data and later withdrew the consent, and does not apply to the extent where the processing of your personal health data is necessary for:

You can exercise your rights at any time by contacting the practice (data controller) or the Data Protection Officer (DPO) at the address below, although we will first need to explain how this may affect the care you receive and any overriding legitimate grounds for the processing that may apply.

Gaining access to the data we hold about you

You have the right to see or have a copy of personal data we hold that can identify you. You do not need to give a reason to see your data. However, some information may be withheld under some exceptional circumstances.

If you want to access your personal information, you must do so in writing.

Our data protection officer is Dr Usman Quraishi.

What is the right to know?

The Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) gives people a general right of access to information held by or on behalf of public authorities, promoting a culture of openness and accountability across the public sector.

What sort of information can I request?

In theory, you can request any information that the practice holds that does not fall under an exemption under the FOI Act. You may not ask for information that is covered by the Data Protection Act or EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) under FOIA.  However, you can request this under a subject access request – see section above ‘gaining access to the data we hold about you’.

How do I make a request for information?

Your request must be in writing and can be either posted or emailed to your relevant surgery by email or post ,please see contact details on our contact us page.