Knutsford Medical Partnership Your Rights
Your Data
How your data is used
Information about your individual care such as treatment and diagnoses is collected about you whenever you use health and care services. It is also used to help us and other organisations for research and planning such as research into new treatments, deciding where to put GP clinics and planning for the number of doctors and nurses in your local hospital. It is only used in this way when there is a clear legal basis to use the information to help improve health and care for you, your family and future generations.
Wherever possible we try to use data that does not identify you, but sometimes it is necessary to use your confidential patient information.
You have a choice
The changes in GDPR mean that we must get explicit permission from patients when using their data. This is to protect your right to privacy, and we may ask you to provide consent to do certain things, like contact you or record certain information about you for your clinical records.
If you do not want your confidential patient information to be used for research and planning, you can choose to opt out securely online or through a telephone service. You can change your mind about your choice at any time
Confidentiality
Every member of staff who works for an NHS organisation has a legal obligation to keep information about you confidential. Anyone who receives information from an NHS organisation has a legal duty to keep it 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 (i.e. life or death situations), or where the law requires information to be passed on.
Data Protection – Your Personal Data is Safe
We are aware that recent events highlighted in the media concerning sharing your personal data may have left you confused and worried.
This has led to a rise in the number of queries asking us who we actually share your personal data with, do we have the rights to and can we trust these external organisations to look after your personal data.
We would like to assure you that as a practice we take your personal data very seriously and we have certain processes in place to make sure your personal data is in safe hands at all times.
As a practice we must adhere to UK Data Protection laws, the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018, both pieces of legislation are around to make sure we look after your data. Where we do not follow any part of the Data Protection laws we are at risk of being investigated by the Information Commissioner’s Officer (ICO) on your behalf, and possibly being issued with a fine or warning. The ICO is an independent advisory body who report directly to Parliament and make sure your rights around your personal data are protected.
To help us keep on track and make sure we abide by these laws we complete something called the Data Security and Protection Toolkit (DSPT) that incorporates the laws. It helps us measure how we are doing and keeps us in line with the law and we are required to complete this annually.
There will be times when we have to share your personal data with external organisations / companies in order to provide you with the care you need. However, we only do this where we need to, where we have a legal reason to do so and when we are happy they will continue to safeguard your personal data. An example would be the Clinical IT system we use that holds your medical records, this is supplied by an IT company who will host your personal data to enable us to use the system.
In any event where we share your personal data we will conduct the necessary Data Protection checks with the external organisation. Like us, they are required by data protection law to provide us with relevant assurances that any personal data we share with them will remain secure. Under the UK GDPR they are required to provide us with documents to assure us and this will include contracts which must include UK GDPR clauses. If an organisation does not process your personal data in line with law they too will be investigated by the ICO.
We cannot share your personal data without a legal basis, which means we cannot give your personal data to anyone ‘just because’ they want it. The UK GDPR sets out 6 legal bases we can use, the most common one you would have heard of is ‘consent.’ Consent is not often used in healthcare and where we are using your personal data for direct care, it just would not work and the UK GDPR recognise this so we apply a legal basis called ‘public tasks.’ Public tasks covers the use of personal data where it relates to either being in the interest of the patients care or the public interest. This means that we do not need to ask for your consent, although we are obliged to be open and transparent with your personal data which we do via our Privacy Notice.
We certainly will not sell your personal data to anyone.
When we share your personal data we need to abide by the UK GDPR principles, one of which is called ‘data minimisation’ – this means we can legally only share what is relevant and necessary for the task.
Finally along with completing the DSPT (as mentioned above) where we have any data protection concerns or need advice we have a dedicated Information Governance team who are on hand to guide us through the do’s and don’ts.
I hope this information has provided you with assurance that we take the necessary steps to make sure your personal data is safe when in our care and that where we share your personal data we do so only if the law allows us to.
Please have a look at the following links for some information:
Summary Care Record Covid 19 Supplementary Notice
GP Connect Patient Information
NHS Track and Trace Privacy Notice
NHS Digital Transparency Notice for GP data for Pandemic Planning & Research (COVID 19)