It is NHS policy to treat all patients and employees fairly and equally regardless of their gender, sexual orientation, marital status, race, colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin, religion, age or disability. You can find details of the policy on the NHS Website.

How Your Information Will Be Used
As your employer, The Parchmore Group needs to keep and process information about you for normal employment purposes. The information we hold and process will be used for our management and administrative use only. We will keep and use it to enable us to run the business and manage our relationship with you effectively, lawfully and appropriately, during the recruitment process, whilst you are working for us, at the time when your employment ends and after you have left. This includes using information to enable us to comply with the employment contract, to comply with any legal requirements, pursue legitimate interest of the surgery, and protect our legal position in the event of legal proceedings. If you do not provide this data, we may be unable in some circumstances to comply with our obligations and we will tell you about the implications of that decision.

As a GP practice pursuing healthcare activities, we may sometimes need to process your data to pursue our legitimate business interest, for example to prevent fraud, administrative purposes or reporting potential crimes. The nature of our legitimate interests is healthcare. We will never process your data where these interests are overridden by your own interests.

Much of the information we hold will have been provided by you, but some may come from other internal sources, or in some cases, external sources such as referees.

The sort of information we hold includes your application and references, your contract of employment and any amendments to it; correspondence with or about you, for example letters to you about a pay rise, or at your request, a letter to your mortgage company confirming your salary; information needed for payroll, benefits and expenses purposes, contact and emergency contact details; records of holiday, sickness and other absence; information needed for equal opportunities monitoring policy; and records relating to your career history, such as training records, appraisal, other performance measures and where appropriate disciplinary and grievance records.

You will, of course, inevitably be referred to in many surgery documents and records that are produced in the course of carrying out your duties and the business of the surgery.

Where necessary, we may keep information relating to your health, which could include reasons for absence and GP reports and notes. This information will be used in order to comply with our health and safety and occupational health obligations. We will also need this data to administer and manage statutory and surgery sick pay.

Where we process special categories of information relating to your racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious and philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, biometric data or sexual orientations, we will always obtain your explicit consent to those activities unless this is not required by law or the information is required to protect your health in an emergency. Where we are processing data based on your consent, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time.

In addition, we monitor computer use, as detailed in our telephone, email and internet policy and our social medial policy (available on the Shared Drive and in the policy folders in the Manager’s Office).

Other than as mentioned below, we will only disclose information about you to third parties if we are legally obliged to do so or where we need to comply with our contractual duties to you, for instance we may need to pass on certain information to our payroll provider, pension or HSCIC.

Your personal data will be stored for a period of 10 years after you have left the surgery.

If in the future we intend to process your personal data for a purpose other than that which it was collected we will provide you with information on that purpose and any other relevant information.

Your Rights
Under the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and The Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA) you have a number of rights with regard to your personal data. You have the right to request from us access to and rectification or erasure of your personal data, the right to restrict processing, object to processing as well as in certain circumstances to the right to data portability.

If you have provided consent for the processing of your data you have the right (in certain circumstances) to withdraw that consent at any time which will not affect the lawfulness of the processing before your consent was withdrawn.

You have the right to lodge a complaint to the Information Commissioner Office if you believe that we have not complied with the requirements of the GDPR or DPA 18 with regard to your personal data.

Identity and contact details of controller and data protection officer. The Parchmore Group is the controller and processor of data for the purposes of the DPA 18 and GDPR.

If you have any concerns as to how your data is processed you can contact Umar Sabat, Data Protection Officer, via email on dpo.swl@nhs.net.

We respect your right to privacy and keep all your health information confidential and secure. Doctors and staff in the practice are contractually bound to maintain patient confidentiality.

It is important that the NHS keeps accurate and up to date records about your health and treatment so that those treating you can give the best possible care. Confidential patient data may be shared within the practice team, and with other health professionals to whom you are referred for care.

Occasionally patient data may also be required for the broader purposes of health care and audit, research and the provision of health care services. Data disclosure will be kept to the minimum required, and if possible anonymised before disclosure. Confidential and patient identifiable information will not be shared without your explicit consent. In some circumstances we may be required by law to release your details to statutory or other official bodies, for example if a court order is presented, or in the case of public health issues. In other circumstances you may be required to give written consent before information is released – such as for medical reports for insurance, solicitors etc.

Access to your own medical records

Under the Data Protection Act 1998, you have a legal right to apply for access to health information held about you. This includes information held by your GP on computer and in paper form. You do not have to give a reason for your request. You may apply to view your medical records or request a copy. For copies of records and there is no facility for immediate access.

Fill out an application form for Access to Medical Records.

• My Access to My Medical Records
• NHS: How to get your medical records
• NHS: Abbreviations commonly found in medical records

All patients are entitled to have a chaperone present for any consultation, examination or procedure where they feel one is required. This chaperone may be a family member or friend.

Or you may prefer a formal chaperone to be present, i.e. a trained member of staff.
If you wish to have a chaperone present, please tell the healthcare professional or notify reception in advance.

Your healthcare professional may also require a chaperone to be present for certain consultations.

It is important that we, the NHS, can use this information to plan and improve services for all patients. We would like to link information from all the different places where you receive care, such as your GP, hospital and community service, to help us provide a full picture. This will allow us to compare the care you received in one area against the care you received in another, so we can see what has worked best.

Information such as your postcode and NHS number, but not your name, will be used to link your records in a secure system, so your identity is protected. Information which does not reveal your identity can then be used by others, such as researchers and those planning health services, to make sure we provide the best care possible for everyone.

You have a choice

If you are happy for your information to be used in this way you do not have to do anything. If you have any concerns or wish to prevent this from happening, please speak to practice staff or download a copy of the leaflet “How information about you helps us to provide better care” below.
We need to make sure that you know this is happening and the choices you have.

• How information about you helps us to provide better care
• Care Data – Frequently Asked Questions
• You can find out more on the NHS England Care Data website

We want to get better at communicating with our patients. We want to make sure you can read and understand the information we send you. If you find it hard to read our letters or if you need someone to support you at appointments, please let us know.

We want to know if you need information in braille, large print or easy read. We want to know if you need a British Sign Language interpreter or advocate.

We want to know if we can support you to lipread or use a hearing aid or communication tool.