How we use your personal data

The health care professionals who provide you with care maintain records about your health and any treatment or care you have received previously. These records help to provide you with the best possible healthcare. Records may be held in electronic or manual (written down) format and may include the following information:

• Details about you, such as address and next of kin
• Any contact the Surgery has had with you, such as appointments or visits
• Notes and reports about your health
• Details about your treatment and care
• Results of investigations, such as blood tests or x-rays
• Relevant information from other health professionals, relatives or those who care for you
  and know you well

To ensure you receive the best possible care your records are used to facilitate the care you receive. Information held about you may be used to help protect the health of the public and to help us manage the NHS. Information may be used for clinical audit to monitor the quality of the service provided, or used for statistical purposes. Where we do this, we take strict measures to ensure individual patients cannot be identified. Sometimes your information may be requested for research purposes, but we will always endeavour to gain your consent before releasing any information.

Should you have any concerns about how your information is managed please contact Laura Weyman at the Surgery on 01594 545332 to discuss how the disclosure of your personal information can be limited.

We will endeavour to ensure that your data is:

• Processed lawfully, fairly and transparently
• Only collected for specific, explicit and legitimate purposes
• Is limited to what is necessary for the purposes for which is it processed
• Is accurate and kept up to date
• Is held securely
• Is only retained for as long as is necessary for the reason it was collected

How do we maintain the confidentiality of your records?

Every member of staff who works for or received information from an NHS organisation has a legal obligation to keep information about you confidential. We maintain our duty of confidentiality to you at all times. We will only ever use or pass on information about you if others involved in your care have a genuine need for it. We will not disclose your information to any third party without your permission unless there are exceptional circumstances or where the law requires us to do so.

We may also have to share your information (subject to strict agreements on how it will be used) with other NHS approved Partner organisations. Further information on this can be found in the Practice’s full Data Privacy (Fair Processing) Notice.