Privacy Notice: Direct Care - Routine Care and Referrals

This practice keeps data on you relating to who you are, where you live, what you do, your family, possibly your friends, your employers, your habits, your problems and diagnoses, the reasons you seek help, your appointments, where you are seen and when you are seen, who by, referrals to specialists and other healthcare providers, tests carried out here and in other places, investigations and scans, treatments and outcomes of treatments, your treatment history, the observations and opinions of other healthcare workers, within and without the NHS as well as comments and aide memoires reasonably made by healthcare professionals in this practice who are appropriately involved in your health care.

When registering for NHS care, all patients who receive NHS care are registered on a national database, the database is held by NHS Digital, a national organisation which has legal responsibilities to collect this data.

NHS GPs have many patients for whom they are responsible and to facilitate efficient and accessible services your GP delegates tasks and responsibilities to others that work with them in their surgeries.  They will also share your care with other organisations, predominantly within the surgery but occasionally with outside organisations and particularly with local partner practices forming part of your GPs Primary Care Network (PCN) with whom your practice works closely and collaboratively to provide the most flexible and accessible services for patients.  This will mean that GPs from other local practices will at times have access to your full GP record but only when providing direct care to you.

If your health needs require care from others elsewhere outside this practice we will exchange with them whatever information about you that is necessary for them to provide that care. When you make contact with healthcare providers outside the practice but within the NHS it is usual for them to send us information relating to that encounter. We will retain part or all of those reports. Normally we will receive equivalent reports of contacts you have with non NHS services, but this is not always the case.

The sharing of your data, within the practice and with those others outside the practice engaged in your direct care is allowed by Law.

People who have access to your information will only normally have access to that which they need to fulfil their roles, for instance admin staff will normally only see your name, address, contact details, appointment history and registration details in order to book appointments, the practice nurses will normally have access to your immunisation, treatment, significant active and important past histories, your allergies and relevant recent contacts whilst the GP you see or speak to will normally have access to everything in your record.

You have the right to object to our sharing your data in these circumstances, but we have an overriding responsibility to do what is in your best interests. Please see below.

1) Controller contact details

Beckenham PCN

2) Data Protection Officer contact details

Danielle Gibbons
GP Data Protection Officer
gpdpo@selondonics.nhs.uk

3) Purpose of the processing

Direct Care is care delivered to the individual alone, most of which is provided in the surgery. After a patient agrees to a referral for direct care elsewhere, such as a referral to a specialist in a hospital, necessary and relevant information about the patient, their circumstances and their problem will need to be shared with the other healthcare workers, such as specialist, therapists, technicians etc. The information that is shared is to enable the other healthcare workers to provide the most appropriate advice, investigations, treatments, therapies and or care.

4) The Lawfulness Conditions and Special Categories

The processing of personal data in the delivery of direct care and for providers’ administrative purposes in this surgery and in support of direct care elsewhere is supported under the following Article 6 and 9 conditions of the GDPR:

Article 6(1)(e) ‘…The processing is necessary for you to perform a task in the public interest or for your official functions, and the task or function has a clear basis in law.

Article 9(2)(h) ‘necessary for the purposes of preventative 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 and services...”  

We will also recognise your rights established under UK case law collectively known as the “Common Law Duty of Confidentiality”

5) Recipient or categories of recipients of the shared data

The data will be shared with Health and care professionals and support staff in this surgery and at hospitals, diagnostic and treatment centres who contribute to your personal care

6) Rights to object

You have the right to object to some or all the information being processed under Article 21. Please contact the Controller or the practice. You should be aware that this is a right to raise an objection, that is not the same as having an absolute right to have your wishes granted in every circumstance

7) Right to access and correct

You have the right to access the data that is being shared and have any inaccuracies corrected. There is no right to have accurate medical records deleted except when ordered by a court of Law.

8) Retention period

The data will be retained in line with the law and national guidance or speak to the practice.

9) Right to Complain.

You have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office online or calling their helpline Tel: 0303 123 1113 (local rate) or 01625 545 745 (national rate)

There are National Offices for Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, (see ICO website).

“Common Law Duty of Confidentiality”, common law is not written out in one document like an Act of Parliament. It is a form of law based on previous court cases decided by judges; hence, it is also referred to as 'judge-made' or case law. The law is applied by reference to those previous cases, so common law is also said to be based on precedent.

The general position is that if information is given in circumstances where it is expected that a duty of confidence applies, that information cannot normally be disclosed without the information provider's consent.

In practice, this means that all patient information, whether held on paper, computer, visually or audio recorded, or held in the memory of the professional, must not normally be disclosed without the consent of the patient. It is irrelevant how old the patient is or what the state of their mental health is; the duty still applies.