Data Protection Privacy Notice for Patients
This privacy notice lets you know what happens to any personal data that you give to us, or any information that we may collect from you or about you from other organisations.
This privacy notice applies to personal information processed by or on behalf of the organisation.
This Notice explains
• Who we are and how we use your information
• Information about our Data Protection Officer
• What kinds of personal information about you we hold and use (process)
• The legal grounds for our processing of your personal information (including when we share it with others)
• What should you do if your personal information changes?
• For how long your personal information is retained / stored by us?
• What are your rights under Data Protection laws
The UK General Data Protection Regulation (UKGDPR 2016) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA 2018) became law on 25th May 2018, and 1st January 2021 when the UK exited the EU.
For the purpose of applicable data protection legislation (including but not limited to the General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (UK) 2016/679) (the “UKGDPR”), and the Data Protection Act 2018 the Organisation responsible for your personal data is Milton Keynes Urgent Care Service.
This Notice describes how we collect, use and process your personal data, and how in doing so, we comply with our legal obligations to you. Your privacy is important to us, and we are committed to protecting and safeguarding your data privacy rights.
How we use your information and the law.
Milton Keynes Urgent Care Service will be what’s known as the ‘Controller’ of your personal data.
We collect basic personal data about you and location-based information. This does include name, address and contact details such as email and mobile number etc.
We will also collect sensitive confidential data known as “special category personal data”, in the form of health information, religious belief (if required in a healthcare setting) ethnicity and sex life information that are linked to your healthcare, we may also receive this information about you from other health providers or third parties.
Why do we need your information?
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 and treatment.
NHS health records may be electronic, paper-based or a mixture of both. We use a combination of working practices and technology to ensure that your information is kept confidential and secure.
Records about you may include the following information;
• Details about you, such as your address, your carer or legal representative and emergency contact details.
• 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 other health professionals, relatives or those who care for you.
• Contact details (including email address, mobile telephone number and home telephone number)
To ensure you receive the best possible care, your records are used to facilitate the care you receive, including contacting you. Information held about you may be used to help protect the health of the public and to help us manage the NHS and the services we provide. Limited information may be used within the organisation for clinical audit to monitor the quality of the service we provided.
How do we lawfully use your data?
We need your personal, sensitive and confidential data in order to provide you with healthcare services, under the General Data Protection Regulation we will be lawfully using your information in accordance with: –
Article 6, e) processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller;”
Article 9, (h) processing is necessary for the purposes of preventive or occupational medicine, for the assessment of the working capacity of the employee, medical diagnosis, the provision of health or social care or treatment or the management of health or social care systems
This Privacy Notice applies to the personal data of our patients and the data you have given us about your carers/family members.
We use your personal and healthcare information in the following ways:
• When we need to speak to or contact other doctors, consultants, nurses, or any other medical/healthcare professional or organisation during your diagnosis or treatment; this includes the use of telephone or video consultation.
• When we are required by law to hand over your information to any other organisation, such as the police, by court order, solicitors, or immigration enforcement.
• In a de-identified form to support planning of health services and to improve health outcomes for our population
We will never pass on your personal information to anyone else who does not need it, or has no right to it, unless you give us consent to do so.
Legal justification for collecting and using your information
The law says we need a legal basis to handle your personal and healthcare information.
Contract: We have a contract with NHS England to deliver healthcare services to you. This contract provides that we are under a legal obligation to ensure that we deliver medical and healthcare services to the public.
Consent: Sometimes we also rely on the fact that you give us consent to use your personal and healthcare information so that we can take care of your healthcare needs.
Please note that you have the right to withdraw consent at any time if you no longer wish to receive services from us.
Necessary care: Providing you with the appropriate healthcare, where necessary. The Law refers to this as ‘protecting your vital interests’ where you may be in a position not to be able to consent.
Law: Sometimes the law obliges us to provide your information to an organisation (see above).
Special categories
The law states that personal information about your health falls into a special category of information because it is very sensitive. Reasons that may entitle us to use and process your information may be as follows:
Public Interest: Where we may need to handle your personal information when it is considered to be in the public interest. For example, when there is an outbreak of a specific disease and we need to contact you for treatment, or we need to pass your information to relevant organisations to ensure you receive advice and/or treatment
Consent: When you have given us consent
Vital Interest: If you are incapable of giving consent, and we have to use your information to protect your vital interests (e.g. if you have had an accident and you need emergency treatment)
Defending a claim: If we need your information to defend a legal claim against us by you, or by another party
Providing you with medical care: Where we need your information to provide you with medical and healthcare services
Confidentiality
Confidentiality and trust are essential to the relationship between clinicians and their patients.
The information a patient provides to their medical professional is confidential, and they can expect that any information that is shared for their direct care will remain confidential.
SystmOne relies on ‘implied consent’.
Explicit consent is not required when information is shared for a direct care purpose. If a patient does not want their information to be shared by the 111 service using GP Connect, they can opt out.
The NDSA and its terms and conditions stipulate that any information received or accessed about a patient for direct care purposes must remain confidential.
In addition to the NDSA, health and social care professionals are also subject to their own professional codes of confidentiality and are aware that any information received via GP Connect is provided in confidence, which must be respected.
Organisations using GP Connect are notified of their duty as ‘controllers’ to be fair and transparent about their processing of their patients’ information and to ensure that their transparency notices are fully updated with how they may be using GP Connect functionality.
NHS England helps support the mitigation of information sharing risks by ensuring that:
• NHS England audit data access is subject to two-factor authentication and role-based access controls – only certain assured users can have access to the full audit logs
• A completed Supplier Conformance Assessment List (SCAL) which covers service and capability specific compliance requirements and controls of the consumer system is in place
It is the responsibility of organisations using GP Connect to ensure that they comply with the NDSA, and their statutory and legal obligations regarding data protection and confidentiality.
Transferring the current paper medical records into patients’ electronic medical records.
The following provisions of the General Data Protection Regulation 2016 permit us to digitise existing paper medical records and those paper records essential for resilience purposes.
Article 6(1)(e) – ‘processing is necessary…in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller…’’
Article 9(2)(h) – ‘processing is necessary for the purpose of preventative…medicine…the provision of health or social care or treatment or the management of health or social care systems and services…’
The organisation will scan and digitise the current paper medical records before destroying them.
Anonymised information
Sometimes we may provide information about you in an anonymised form. Such information is used analyse population- level heath issues, and helps the NHS to plan better services. If we share information for these purposes, then none of the information will identify you as an individual and cannot be traced back to you.
Medicines Management
The organisation may conduct Medicines Management Reviews of medications prescribed to its patients. This service performs a review of prescribed medications to ensure patients receive the most appropriate, up to date and cost-effective treatments. The reviews are carried out by the ICBs Medicines Management Team.
Summary Care Records
All patients registered with a GP have a Summary Care Record, unless they have chosen not to have one. The information held in your Summary Care Record gives registered and regulated healthcare professionals, away from your usual GP practice, access to information to provide you with safer care, reduce the risk of prescribing errors and improve your patient experience.
Your Summary Care Record contains basic (Core) information about allergies and medications and any reactions that you have had to medication in the past.
Some patients, including many with long term health conditions, previously have agreed to have Additional Information shared as part of their Summary Care Record. This Additional Information includes information about significant medical history (past and present), reasons for medications, care plan information and immunisations.
Patient Communication
Because we are obliged to protect any confidential information, we hold about you and we take this very seriously.
We may contact you using SMS texting to your mobile phone if we need to notify you about appointments and other services that we provide to you involving your direct care, therefore you must ensure that your GP has up-to-date details. This is to ensure we are sure we are contacting you and not another person. As this is operated on an ‘opt out’ basis we will assume that you give us permission to contact you via SMS if you have provided your GP with your mobile telephone number. We may also contact you using the email address you have provided to your GP.
There may be occasions where authorised research facilities would like you to take part in research. Your contact details may be used to invite you to receive further information about such research opportunities.
Safeguarding
The organisation is dedicated to ensuring that the principles and duties of safeguarding adults and children are holistically, consistently and conscientiously applied with the wellbeing of all, at the heart of what we do.
Our legal basis for processing For the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) purposes is: –
Article 6(1)(e) ‘…exercise of official authority…’.
For the processing of special categories data, the basis is: –
Article 9(2)(b) – ‘processing is necessary for the purposes of carrying out the obligations and exercising specific rights of the controller or of the data subject in the field of employment and social security and social protection law…’
Categories of personal data
The data collected by the organisation’s staff in the event of a safeguarding situation will be as much personal information as is possible that is necessary to obtain in order to handle the situation. In addition to some basic demographic and contact details, we will also process details of what the safeguarding concern is. This is likely to be special category information (such as health information).
Sources of the data
The organisation will either receive or collect information when someone contacts the organisation with safeguarding concerns, or we believe there may be safeguarding concerns and make enquiries to relevant providers.
Recipients of personal data
The information is used by the organisation when handling a safeguarding incident or concern. We may share information accordingly to ensure duty of care and investigation as required with other partners such as local authorities, the police or healthcare professionals (i.e. their GP or mental health team).
Organisations Third party processors
In order to deliver the best possible service, the organisation will share data (where required) with other NHS bodies such as GP practices and hospitals. In addition, the organisation will use carefully selected third party service providers. When we use a third party service provider to process data on our behalf then we will always have an appropriate agreement in place to ensure that they keep the data secure, that they do not use or share information other than in accordance with our instructions and that they are operating appropriately. Examples of functions that may be carried out by third parties include:
• Companies that provide IT services & support, including our core clinical systems; systems which manage patient facing services (such as our website and service accessible through the same); data hosting service providers; systems which facilitate appointment bookings or electronic prescription services; document management services etc.
Further details regarding specific third-party processors can be supplied on request to the Data Protection Officer as below.
How do we maintain the confidentiality of your records?
We are committed to protecting your privacy and will only use information collected lawfully in accordance with:
• Data Protection Act 2018
• The General Data Protection Regulations 2016
• Human Rights Act 1998
• Common Law Duty of Confidentiality
• Health and Social Care Act 2012
• NHS Codes of Confidentiality, Information Security and Records Management
• Information: To Share or Not to Share Review
Every member of staff who works for an NHS organisation has a legal obligation to keep information about you confidential.
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 (i.e. life or death situations), where the law requires information to be passed on and / or in accordance with the information sharing principle following Dame Fiona Caldicott’s information sharing review (Information to share or not to share) where “The duty to share information can be as important as the duty to protect patient confidentiality.” This means that health and social care professionals should have the confidence to share information in the best interests of their patients within the framework set out by the Caldicott principles.
Our organisational policy is to respect the privacy of our patients, their families and our staff and to maintain compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation 2016 (GDPR 2016) and all UK specific Data Protection Requirements. Our policy is to ensure all personal data related to our patients will be protected.
All employees and sub-contractors engaged by our organisation are asked to sign a confidentiality agreement. The organisation will, if required, sign a separate confidentiality agreement if the client deems it necessary. If a sub-contractor acts as a data processor for MKUCS an appropriate contract (art 24-28) will be established for the processing of your information.
In certain circumstances you may have the right to withdraw your consent to the processing of data. Please contact the Data Protection Officer in writing if you wish to withdraw your consent. If some circumstances we may need to store your data after your consent has been withdrawn to comply with a legislative requirement.
Some of this information will be held centrally and used for statistical purposes. Where we do this, we take strict measures to ensure that individual patients cannot be identified. Sometimes your information may be requested to be used for research purposes we will always gain your consent before releasing the information for this purpose in an identifiable format. In some circumstances you can Opt-out of the organisation sharing any of your information for research purposes.
With your consent we would also like to use your information
There are times that we may want to use your information to contact you or offer you services, not directly about your healthcare, in these instances we will always gain your consent to contact you. We would however like to use your name, contact details and email address to inform you of other services that may benefit you. We will only do this with your consent. There may be occasions where authorised research facilities would like you to take part on innovations, research, improving services or identifying trends, you will be asked to opt into such programmes if you are happy to do so.
At any stage where we would like to use your data for anything other than the specified purposes and where there is no lawful requirement for us to share or process your data, we will ensure that you have the ability to consent and opt out prior to any data processing taking place.
This information is not shared with third parties or used for any marketing and you can unsubscribe at any time via phone, email or by informing the practice DPO as below.
Where do we store your information electronically?
All the personal data we process is processed by our staff in the UK however for the purposes of IT hosting and maintenance this information may be located on servers within the European Union.
No 3rd parties have access to your personal data unless the law allows them to do so and appropriate safeguards have been put in place such as a Data Processor as above). We have a Data Protection regime in place to oversee the effective and secure processing of your personal and or special category (sensitive, confidential) data.
We also process card payments for prescriptions using a third-party system; Clover Point of Sale. We collect information about the transaction, which may include personal data. Information about transactions includes the payment card used, name associated with the payment card, electronic signature, name and location of the merchant at which the transaction occurred, date and time of the transaction, transaction amount, and information about the goods or services purchased in the transaction. Full details on how we and the third party provider, collect, use and store data in order to process a payment can be found at: Privacy Policy | Clover | www.eu.clover.com
We take our duty to protect your personal data and our confidentiality obligations seriously and we will take reasonable measures to ensure the confidentiality and security of all personal data, whether on paper or computerised. We only keep your data for as long as is necessary to fulfil the purpose for which it is collected.
Who are our partner organisations?
We may also have to share your information, subject to strict agreements on how it will be used, with the following organisations;
• NHS Trusts / Foundation Trusts
• GP’s
• Primary Care Network
• NHS Commissioning Support Units
• Independent Contractors such as dentists, opticians, pharmacists
• Private Sector Providers
• Voluntary Sector Providers
• Ambulance Trusts
• Integrated Care Boards
• Social Care Services
• NHS England (NHSE) and NHS Digital (NHSD)
• Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH)
• Local Authorities
• Education Services
• Fire and Rescue Services
• Police & Judicial Services
• Voluntary Sector Providers
• Private Sector Providers
• Other ‘data processors’ which you will be informed of
You will be informed who your data will be shared with and in some cases asked for consent for this to happen when this is required.
Computer System
This practice operates a Clinical Computer System on which NHS Staff record information securely. This information can then be shared with other clinicians so that everyone caring for you is fully informed about your medical history, including allergies and medication.
To provide around the clock safe care, unless you have asked us not to, we will make information available to our Partner Organisation (above). Wherever possible, their staff will ask your consent before your information is viewed.
Shared Care Records
To support your care and improve the sharing of relevant information to our partner organisations (as above) when they are involved in looking after you, we will share information to other systems. You can opt out of this sharing of your records with our partners at any time if this sharing is based on your consent.
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. All employees and sub-contractors engaged by our practice are asked to sign a confidentiality agreement. If a sub-contractor acts as a data processor for [Practice Name] an appropriate contract (art 24-28) will be established for the processing of your information.
Our website
The only website this Privacy Notice applies to is the organisations website. If you use a link to any other website from the Surgery’s website then you will need to read their respective Privacy Notice. We take no responsibility (legal or otherwise) for the content of other websites.
The organisations website uses cookies. For more information on which cookies, we use and how we use them, please see our Cookies Policy.
CCTV Recording
CCTV is installed on our premises covering both the external area of the building and the internal area excluding consulting rooms. Images are held to improve the personal security of patients and staff whilst on the premises, and for the prevention and detection of crime. The images are recorded onto an integral hard drive of the equipment and are overwritten on a rolling basis. Viewing of these digital images is password protected and controlled by service.
Telephone System
Our telephone system records all telephone calls. Recordings are retained for up to three years, and are used periodically for the purposes of seeking clarification where there is a dispute as to what was said and for staff training Access to these recordings is restricted to named senior staff.
Video Consultations
The organisations may use video consultations to see patients who may not need to attend the surgery in person, all such systems are NHS security checked and authorised, the practice has a video consultation policy and the statutory powers to process your data via this method of communication, are as above for direct care.
Objections / Complaints
Should you have any concerns about how your information is managed at the service, please contact us or the Data Protection Officer as above. If you are still unhappy following a review by the service, you have a right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority: You have a right to complain to the UK supervisory Authority as below.
Information Commissioner:
Wycliffe house
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire. SK9 5AF
Tel: 01625 545745
https://ico.org.uk/
If you are happy for your data to be used for the purposes described in this privacy notice, then you do not need to do anything. If you have any concerns about how your data is shared, then please contact the Practice Data Protection Officer.
If you would like to know more about your rights in respect of the personal data we hold about you, please contact the Data Protection Officer as below.
Data Protection Officer:
The Practice Data Protection Officer is Paul Couldrey of PCIG Consulting Limited. Any queries regarding Data Protection issues should be addressed to him at: –
Email: Couldrey@me.com
Postal: PCIG Consulting Limited
7 Westacre Drive
Quarry Bank
Dudley
West Midlands
DY5 2EE
Changes:
It is important to point out that we may amend this Privacy Notice from time to time. If you are dissatisfied with any aspect of our Privacy Notice, please contact the Data Protection Officer.
