Practice Policies & Patient Information

Care Quality Commission

General Data Protection Regulation Privacy Notice

General Practice Data for Planning and Research (GPDfPR)

There has been lots of information circulating through various news sources regarding the planned extraction of data from your GP records by the NHS Digital.

This was initially due to happen in July 2021, following a deadline for patients to opt-out prior to this but has now been postponed until September 2021, pending further consultation by the government with the public and other stakeholders.

We will post further updates to this as and when they are released.

IPC Annual Statement Report

National data opt-out information

Online Access To Medical Records

Centre Medical Centre has an obligation under new NHS rules to provide online access to detailed coded medical records for our patients.

If you have already registered for online access then Click Here to access your medical records online.

Alternatively, call us and ask a member of our reception team to get you registered for this service.

We keep records about your health to enable you to receive the care and treatment that you need, now and in the future. This information is personal to you and all our staff have a duty to keep it confidential. This confidentiality means that only the information which is essential is used and will only identify you where it is absolutely necessary.

Health records will be kept both on paper and on computer files. The purpose for which some of the information in your health record may be used can include:

Review or survey by doctors, nurses and other health professionals of the care they provide to ensure that it is of the highest standard.
Management of the National Health Service, for example planning local requirements, investigating complaints, reviewing how effective services are.

Education and training of doctors, nurses and other health professionals.
Approved research and audit into health and health service monitoring and promoting the health of the public. For some types of research we may get in touch with you and ask you to complete questionnaires or confirm additional details.

Where appropriate we may also provide your details to the local authority Social Services department to enable them to provide you with appropriate social care and on rare occasions it may also be necessary to give information to the Courts, following receipt of a Court Order requiring disclosure.

Doctors, dentists, nurses and other health professionals are encouraged to share with you the information they record. You, of course, have a legal right of access to your own health record (subject to certain limitations laid down by Parliament). If you wish, your relatives, friends or carers can be kept up-to-date with the progress of your treatment – In this instance we will need your written permission so that we know we are giving your information to the correct person or people.

Many primary care services in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough use a secure electronic health record system called SystmOne. This is now the system we use at Central Medical Centre. Your health record held on SystmOne includes your medical history, details about your medication and any allergies you may have. With your permission, this system can allow clinicians to share your full record held at one service with other healthcare services who are providing care for you. These other services will ask your permission to view your record.

Opt-out of a Summary Care Record

PHM Privacy Policy

NHSE/I Population Health Management Development Programme

Cambridgeshire and Peterborough CCG

Population Health Management (PHM) Privacy Notice Suggestion

Under data protection law we must tell you about how we use your personal information. This includes the personal information that we share with other organisations and why we do so. Our main GP practice privacy notice is on our website. This additional privacy notice provides details about Population Health Management.

What is Population Health Management (PHM)?

PHM is about improving the physical and mental health outcomes and wellbeing of people and making sure that access to services is fair, timely, and equal. It helps to reduce the occurrence of ill-health and looks at all the wider factors that affect health and care.

This programme of work is aimed at improving the health of both local and national populations. It is being implemented across the NHS and this Practice is taking part in a programme extending across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough.

Population Health Management requires health and social care, to work together with communities and partner agencies, for example, GP practices, community service providers, hospitals and other health and social care providers. The organisations will share and combine de-identified information (where information identifying you has been removed) with each other in order to get a view of health and services for the population in a particular area. This information sharing is subject to robust security arrangements and risk assessments.

How will my Personal Information be used?

The information needed for this Programme will include information about your health and social care. Information about you and your care will be used in the programme, but in a format that does not directly identify you which we refer to within this privacy notice as pseudonymised. This information will be combined and anything that can identify you (like your name or NHS Number) will be removed and replaced with a unique code. This means that the people working with the data will only see the code and cannot see which patient the information relates to.

The information will be used for a number of health and social care related activities such as:

Identifying groups of patients that could benefit from direct interventions
improving the quality and standards of care provided
research into the development of new treatments
preventing illness and diseases
monitoring safety
planning services

If the PHM programme sees that an individual might benefit from some additional care or support, the programme will send the information back to your GP or hospital provider and they will use the code to identify you and offer you relevant services.

Who will my personal information be shared with?

Your GP and other care providers will send the information they hold on their systems to the North of England Commissioning Support Unit (NECS) https://www.necsu.nhs.uk/ , who are part of NHS England. NHS Digital (who already holds information about other health and care attendances), will also send the information they hold to NECS. Social care data will also be provided by the Local Authority.

NECS will then de-identify (pseudonymise) all the data before sharing the data with Optum Health Solutions UK https://www.optum.co.uk/ who have been contracted by NHS England to link, combine, and analyse the data during the programme.

Both NECS and Optum are legally obliged to protect your information and maintain confidentiality in the same way that your GP or hospital provider is.

What will happen to my Personal Information when the Project is Finished?

On completion of the 22 week programme all data will be securely destroyed from NECS and Optum servers and a certificate of destruction provided to you GP surgery and other healthcare provider. This will not affect personal information already held by your GP or other health and social care providers.

Is using my personal data in this way lawful

Health Care Providers are permitted by data protection law to use information where it is “necessary for medical purposes”. This includes caring for you directly as well as management of health services more generally.

Sharing and using your information in this way helps to provide better health and care for you, your family and future generations. Confidential patient information about your health and care is only used where allowed by law and in this case, anonymised data is used so that you cannot be identified.

This programme’s legal basis for sharing your information is GDPR Article 6 (1) (e) “Processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller” and Article 9 (2) (h) “Processing is necessary for the purpose of …the provision of health or social care or treatment or the management of health or social care systems”.

In addition we uphold our duty of confidentiality to you by ensuring the appropriate de-identification of your information, ensuring you are made aware of how your information is used and giving you the choice to object to this use (see below).

Can I object to my data being used as part of this programme.

Yes. You have the right to opt out of sharing your personal data being used in this way. You can do this in two ways:

Opt out of all sharing of your data for other uses outside your GP Practice

This is called a Type 1 opt out and you should request this directly to us, your GP practice. This will be applied not only to this programme but to any others we take part in.

National Data Opt-out (opting out of NHS Digital sharing your data)

You can find out more about and register a National Data Opt-out, or change your choice on nhs.uk/your-nhs-data-matters or by calling 0300 3035678.

This applies to identifiable patient data about your health which is called confidential patient information. If you don’t want your confidential patient information to be shared by NHS Digital with other organisations for purposes except your own care – either GP data, or other data it holds, such as hospital data – you can register a National Data Opt-out.

If you have registered a National Data Opt-out, NHS Digital won’t share any confidential patient information about you with other organisations, unless there is an exemption to this, such as where there is a legal requirement or where it is in the public interest to do so, such as helping to manage contagious diseases like coronavirus. You can find out more about exemptions on the NHS website.

Subject Access Request Policy

Supplementary Covid-19 Privacy Policy

Covid-19 response transparency notice – Updated on 27th September 2020

The health and social care system is taking action to manage and mitigate the spread and impact of the current outbreak of coronavirus (COVID-19).

Action to be taken requires the collection, analysis and sharing of information, including confidential patient information where necessary and lawful, amongst health organisations and other appropriate bodies. This is due to the urgent need to protect public health and respond to the COVID-19 outbreak. This notice describes how we may use your information to protect you and others during the COVID-19 outbreak.

To support the healthcare response to COVID-19, NHS Digital has been directed by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (the Secretary of State) and NHS England under the COVID-19 Directions to:

establish information systems to collect and analyse data in connection with COVID-19; and
develop and operate IT systems to deliver services in connection with COVID-19

Examples of some of the purposes for which NHS Digital may process personal data under the COVID-19 Directions and in response to these requests may include processing personal data for the purposes of:

understanding COVID-19 and risks to public health, trends in COVID-19 and such risks, and controlling and preventing the spread of COVID-19 and such risks
identifying and understanding information about patients or potential patients with, or at risk of COVID-19, information about incidents of patient exposure to COVID-19 and the management of patients with or at risk of COVID-19 including: locating, contacting, screening, flagging and monitoring such patients and collecting information about and providing services in relation to testing, diagnosis, self-isolation, fitness to work, treatment, medical and social interventions and recovery from COVID-19
understanding information about patient access to health services and adult social care services as a direct or indirect result of COVID-19, and the availability and capacity of those services
monitoring and managing the response to COVID-19 by health and social care bodies and the Government including providing information to the public about COVID-19 and its effectiveness and information about capacity, medicines, equipment, supplies, services and the workforce within the health services and adult social care services
delivering services to patients, clinicians, the health services and adult social care services workforce and the public about and in connection with COVID-19, including the provision of information, fit notes and the provision of health care and adult social care services
research and planning in relation to COVID-19

At the present time we have been informed that NHS Digital will be collecting patient level data on a weekly basis in order to:

identify patients who are clinically extremely vulnerable if they contract COVID-19
identify patients who are at moderate or high risk of complications from flu or COVID-19

The GPES data extraction will identify all patients currently registered with a General
Practice who fall under the cohort count and 70 code clusters specified in the business rules (i.e. have particular conditions / medical history).
Click Here for more information.

For each patient above, NHS Digital will require the following personal data, as well as the General Practice that individuals are registered with:
NHS Number
surname and forename
date of birth
date of death
address
ethnic category
sex

Where a patient’s record contains a defined long-term medical condition, which poses a COVID-19 risk and/or a condition/code which identifies a patient as being of moderate or high risk of complications from flu/COVID-19, data will be extracted for:

• the associated SNOMED3 CT code(s) and date(s) for the: medical condition
o recorded activity for COVID-19 in the patient’s medical record
o drug treatment(s)
• any values such as scores or prescriptions associated with the SNOMED CT code(s).

The GPES data will be extracted on a weekly basis with the revised data collection due week commencing 28 September 2020. The extraction will then continue until the expiry of the COVID-19 Direction.

This is currently 31 March 2022 but will be reviewed in September 2020 and every six months thereafter. The frequency of the data collection may change in response to demand.

Covid-19 and your information – Updated on 17th June 2020 (Privacy note on Covid-19 for Patients)

This notice describes how we may use your information to protect you and others during the Covid-19 outbreak. It supplements our main Privacy Notice which is available.

The health and social care system is facing significant pressures due to the Covid-19 outbreak. Health and care information is essential to deliver care to individuals, to support health and social care services and to protect public health. Information will also be vital in researching, monitoring, tracking and managing the outbreak. In the current emergency it has become even more important to share health and care information across relevant organisations.

Existing law which allows confidential patient information to be used and shared appropriately and lawfully in a public health emergency is being used during this outbreak.

Using this law the Secretary of State has required NHS Digital; NHS England and Improvement; Arms-Length Bodies (such as Public Health England); local authorities; health organisations and GPs to share confidential patient information to respond to the Covid-19 outbreak. Any information used or shared during the Covid-19 outbreak will be limited to the period of the outbreak unless there is another legal basis to use the data. Further information is available on gov.uk.

During this period of emergency, opt-outs will not generally apply to the data used to support the Covid-19 outbreak, due to the public interest in sharing information. This includes National Data Opt-outs. However in relation to the Summary Care Record, existing choices will be respected. Where data is used and shared under these laws your right to have personal data erased will also not apply. It may also take us longer to respond to Subject Access requests, Freedom of Information requests and new opt-out requests whilst we focus our efforts on responding to the outbreak.

In order to look after your health and care needs we may share your confidential patient information including health and care records with clinical and non-clinical staff in other health and care providers, for example neighbouring GP practices, hospitals and NHS 111.

We may also use the details we have to send public health messages to you, either by phone, text or email.
During this period of emergency we may offer you a consultation via telephone or videoconferencing.

By accepting the invitation and entering the consultation you are consenting to this. Your personal/confidential patient information will be safeguarded in the same way it would with any other consultation.

We will also be required to share personal/confidential patient information with health and care organisations and other bodies engaged in disease surveillance for the purposes of protecting public health, providing healthcare services to the public and monitoring and managing the outbreak. Further information about how health and care data is being used and shared by other NHS and social care organisations in a variety of ways to support the Covid-19 response is available on the NHS website.

NHS England and Improvement and NHSX have developed a single, secure store to gather data from across the health and care system to inform the Covid-19 response. This includes data already collected by NHS England, NHS Improvement, Public Health England and NHS Digital. New data will include 999 call data, data about hospital occupancy and A&E capacity data as well as data provided by patients themselves. All the data held in the platform is subject to strict controls that meet the requirements of data protection legislation.

In such circumstances where you tell us you’re experiencing Covid-19 symptoms we may need to collect specific health data about you. Where we need to do so, we will not collect more information than we require and we will ensure that any information collected is treated with the appropriate safeguards.

We may amend this privacy notice at any time so please review it frequently. The date at the top of this page will be amended each time this notice is updated.