Confidentiality

The practice complies with Data Protection legislation and we make every effort to preserve patient confidentiality. We ask you for personal information to ensure that you receive appropriate care and treatment. For the practice to function effectively it is sometimes necessary for medical information about you to be shared between members of the practice team. It will be shared with others only to provide further medical treatment for you, e.g. from hospital services, or to enable you to access other services, e.g. from the social work department.  

The principles of confidentiality apply equally to all patients regardless of age. Young people (including those under 16) are entitled to equal confidentiality as all other patients. This includes respecting their wishes to withhold information from parents or guardians. The GP involved will determine the competency of a young person seeking treatment and will determine the extent to which confidentiality guidelines apply in each case.

Data protection - How we handle your data

HANDLING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

(In accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998)

We need to handle personal information about you so that we can provide the necessary health services for you. We hold computer and paper records helping us to deal with your health needs. The practice is responsible for the accuracy and safe keeping of your health records.

When we ask for personal information, we will undertake to:

• Make sure you know why we need it
• To only ask for what we need, and not collect irrelevant information
• To protect it and make sure nobody has access to it who shouldn’t
• To only share it with other organisations as and when the law allows
• To make sure we don’t keep it longer than necessary
• Not to make your personal information available for commercial use

Anyone at the practice who handles your personal information is bound by the NHS Code of Confidentiality and works under legal and contractual obligations to keep your information private and secure. 

We ask that you help us to keep your personal information up to date by:

• Giving us accurate information
• Telling us as soon as possible if there are any changes, such as a new address or telephone number, including mobile numbers

Freedom of information

The practice produces a complete guide to the information routinely made available to the public by our GPs. A copy of this guide is available from reception.

Disability and discrimination

We will provide care, now and in the future, to all our patients without discrimination and irrespective of patient’s age, sex, race, beliefs or special needs.  We expect that patients will show no discrimination towards other surgery users, members of the practice team or our colleagues in the NHS.

Complaints

We aim to give a friendly and professional service to everyone who attends our practice. However, if, for any reason, our service should fall below our patients’ satisfaction, we take all complaints very seriously. If you would like to make a complaint regarding the surgery or the services we offer, please contact the Practice Manager, either by telephone or in writing, who will make every effort to respond to your concerns as soon as possible. All complaints will be treated as confidential.

Patient Charter

We aim to treat our patients courteously at all times and expect our patients to treat our staff in a similarly respectful way. It is your responsibility to keep your appointments, inform us of your past illnesses, medication, hospital admissions and any other relevant details.

We are committed to providing you and all our team with a safe environment at the surgery.  We will not tolerate violent or abusive behaviour from any patient towards any other patient, team member or other persons in the surgery or during visits.  Any such behaviour will usually result in the patient responsible being required to leave the practice list.

For further information on any of our policies, please contact the practice manager.