Download Fair Processing Notice - Consett Medical Centre

Dr Young & Partners Consett Medical Centre – Your Confidential Information
Fair Processing Notice
This notice explains why the practice collects information about you and how that information may
be used. If you have any concerns or questions please contact the practice manager.
Health care professionals at the practice maintain records about your health and any treatment or
care you have received previously (e.g. at a hospital, GP Surgery, Walk-in clinic, etc.). These records
help to provide you with the best possible healthcare and allow us to monitor and audit the quality
of the care that we provide.
Your record may be electronic, paper or a mixture of both. We ensure your information is kept
confidential and secure. Records which the practice holds about you may include:
• Details about you, such as your address and contact details
• Contact the surgery has had with you, such as appointments, clinic visits, prescriptions
• Notes and reports about your health
• Details about your treatment and care
• Results of investigations such as laboratory tests, x-rays etc
• Relevant information from others – such as other health professionals, or relatives.
Sharing Your Information Outside the Practice
In general, the information we hold about you is highly confidential and we will not release it to any
other person or organisation without your permission. However, there are some circumstances
when we do release your information.
Sharing Your Information When The Law Requires Us To
There are rare circumstances when the law requires us to release personal information about you.
These include:

Information about certain infections e.g. tuberculosis or measles

Information that might help to prevent significant harm to children

If a court orders the release of healthcare information
If we need to release such information, we will try our best to make sure you know about the
release of information.
Sharing Information To Help Care For You (called direct care data use)
Sometimes we share some information about you with other organisations to help deliver your care.
For example, if you are referred to the hospital we will send a summary of your medical information
and medications with the reason for the referral. Other NHS organisations that receive this
information are under the same strict controls about how they keep this data safe and secure.
We also share very limited information with organisations that pay for your care so we can prove we
have delivered the care. Example organisations include NHS England, North Durham Clinical
Commissioning Group and Derwentside Healthcare (the local GP federation). Only the minimal
information required is shared in these circumstances.
There are also a number of specific information sharing schemes that we take part in to try and
ensure that your care is as good as it can be:
Summary Care Record – the summary care record (SCR) is a national scheme to share information
about the medicines you are prescribed and any allergies or other adverse reactions you have
experienced. Health professionals at other organisations will only be able to access this information
with your permission. You can opt-out of this scheme – please ask at the surgery if you need more
details.
SystmOne Sharing – Your clinical record is stored in a system called SystmOne. This system allows
other health professionals using the same system to access the medical record we hold about you
but only if you give them permission when they are seeing you. Local professionals who might ask
you for such permission would include physiotherapists, district nurses, Macmillan nurses, diabetes
specialists and the out of hours GP. You can opt-out of this scheme – please ask at the surgery if you
need more details.
We may also use external companies to process personal information, such as for archiving
purposes. These companies are bound by contractual agreements to ensure information is kept
confidential and secure.
Sharing Information For Other Reasons (called secondary data use)
It is very helpful for people who design and manage the NHS and those who want to carry out
research into healthcare to be able to look at patient information. Information from your medical
record may sometimes be shared with organisations such as NHS Digital*, the national diabetes
audit, local managers of the NHS, Derwentside Healthcare (the local GP federation) or research
organisations. Information will only ever be released to organisations who are subject to the same
strict rules about safe use and storage of information that we are.
*The Health and Social Care Act 2012 allows NHS Digital to collate personal confidential data from GP practices without
seeking your specific consent.
This includes personal confidential data such as referrals, NHS prescriptions and other clinical data. It also includes
identifiers like your date of birth, postcode, NHS number and gender. This is so that your information can be linked with
data from other healthcare settings for example, the hospital
If you do not wish your identifiable information to be released for such purposes you can opt-out of
this – please ask at the surgery if you need more details.
Keeping You Up To Date
Any patient can choose to withdraw permission for information sharing. If you do withdraw
permission but then change your mind, you can let us know at any time and we will update your
record. When the Practice is about to participate in any new information sharing scheme we will
make patients aware by displaying prominent notices in the surgery and on our website at least four
weeks before the scheme is due to start. We will also explain clearly what you have to do to ‘optout’ of each new scheme.
It is important to understand that if you do opt-out of data sharing for direct care purposes, may
mean that you receive care that is not as good.
Any changes to this notice will be published on our website and on the Practice notice board.
Access To Personal Information
You have a right under the Data Protection Act 1998 to access/view information the Practice holds
about you, and to have it amended or removed should it be inaccurate. This is known as ‘the right of
subject access’. If we do hold information about you we will:
• give you a description of it;
• tell you why we are holding it;
• tell you who it could be disclosed to; and
• let you have a copy of the information in an intelligible form.
If you would like to make a ‘subject access request’, you need to do the following:
• Your request must be made in writing to the practice - for information from the hospital you
should write direct to them
• There may be a charge to have a printed copy of the information held about you
• We are required to respond to you within 40 days
• You will need to give adequate information (for example full name, address, date of birth, NHS
number and details of your request) so that your identity can be verified and your records located
Objections / Complaints
Should you have any concerns about how your information is managed at the practice, please
contact the GP Practice Manager. If you are still unhappy following a review by the GP practice, you
can then complain to the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) via their website
(www.ico.gov.uk).
Guidance and References

The Data Protection Act 1998 requires organisations to register with the Information
Commissioner to describe the purposes for which they process personal information. This
information is available on the Information Commissioners Office website www.ico.org.uk

The practice is registered with the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) as a data
controller under the Data Protection Act 1998. The registration number is Z5351608 and can
be viewed online register at http://ico.org.uk/what_we_cover/register_of_data_controllers

Further information about the way in which the NHS uses personal information and your
rights in that respect can be found in:
The NHS Care Record Guarantee: http://www.nigb.nhs.uk/pubs/nhscrg.pdf

The NHS Constitution: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-nhs-constitutionfor-england

NHS Digital’s Guide to Confidentiality gives more information on the rules around
information sharing : http://content.digital.nhs.uk/article/4979/Assuring-information

An independent review of how information about patients is shared across the health and
care system led by Dame Fiona Caldicott was conducted in 2012. The report, Information:
To share or not to share? The Information Governance Review, be found at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-information-governance-review

The NHS Commissioning Board – NHS England – Better Data, Informed Commissioning,
Driving Improved Outcomes: Clinical Data Sets provides further information about the data
flowing within the NHS to support commissioning.http://www.england.nhs.uk/wpcontent/uploads/2012/12/clinical-datasets.pdf

Please visit NHS Digital’s website (formerly HSCIC) for further information about their
work. Information about their responsibility for collecting data from across the health and
social care system can be found at: http://content.digital.nhs.uk/collectingdata

The Information Commissioner’s Office is the Regulator for the Data Protection Act 1998 and
offer independent advice and guidance on the law and personal data, including your rights
and how to access your personal information. For further information please visit the
Information Commissioner’s Office website at http://www.ico.gov.uk.