Who Can See Your Information
Your information is strictly protected and only released to other organisations to further your treatment. The other organisations who might care for you include:
- Your General Practice, Pharmacies and Dentists.
- Hospitals, Walk in Centres, Out of Hours Doctors, NHS Direct.
- Community Services (nurses, midwives and therapists).
- Local Authority Departments, including Social Services, Education and Housing.
- Voluntary Care organisations.
- Private Sector organisations (private hospitals, care homes, hospices).
Your Doctor And Other Health Professionals
Doctors need to make notes on paper or computer systems about any diagnosis, test results, treatments, drug prescriptions and other additional information that you may provide, that seems relevant to the treatment of your condition.
We need to keep this information in order to provide proper care for you (for later treatment or if you should be seen by another doctor) and to allow others to check the treatment that you have received.
Nurses and other health professionals also need access to these records, and will add their own notes, as part of the overall healthcare provision.
Secretaries, receptionists and other clerical staff need access to some of your records in order to do administrative tasks such as booking appointments and communicating with you and other parts of the NHS.
Your doctor may also need to provide information under certain Acts of Parliament e.g. the Public Health Act (Control of Diseases) 1984 - which is necessary to prevent the outbreak of highly contagious diseases - for example meningitis, to protect you and others.
The Health Service
In order to manage the NHS, some restricted information concerning treatments, drugs prescribed, number of patients seen etc is needed, and hospitals and general practices must provide this information in returns to various central bodies.
This information has personal details such as your name and address removed wherever possible.
It is necessary from time to time to check these returns to prevent fraud e.g. checking prescriptions as part of the NHS's statutory obligations. This may result in your being contacted to see if you will consent to your records being checked. Only if you do consent will the auditors be allowed to access your records.
Clinical Audit
The quality of care provided to you is sometimes reviewed through the process of clinical audit. This may involve members of the healthcare team or the clinical audit department reviewing patient records. Any information collected from this review is anonymised so that individual patients cannot be identified.
Other Agencies
Everyone working for the NHS has a legal duty to keep information about you confidential.
You may be receiving care from other organisations as well as the NHS (like Social Services). We may need to share some information about you so we can all work together for your benefit.
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 third parties without your permission unless there are exceptional circumstances, such as when the health and safety of others is at risk or where the law requires information to be passed on.
Research
Research is only carried out when it has been approved by the PCT’s Ethics Committee. Your health record can also help us with research studies. Organisations that have provided care for you may invite you to participate in studies on behalf of research programmes. You are under no obligation to take part. No person identifiable information will be passed to researchers unless you choose to take part.
Sharing Your Information Without Your Consent
We will normally inform you and ensure you are happy for your information to be shared, but there are times when we may need to share your information without your consent. This will only happen where we are legally required to do so, or the law allows us to do so in order to protect you or other people. Such situations include:
- Where there is a risk of harm or abuse to you or other people.
- Where a serious crime, such as assault, is being investigated or where it could be prevented.
- To control infectious diseases such as meningitis, tuberculosis (TB) or measles.
- Notification of a birth.
- Where the courts have made a formal order in relation to a court case.
We will try to inform you if we share your information without your consent.
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