Confidentiality

The practice complies with data protection and access to medical records legislation. Identifiable information about you will be shared with others in the following circumstances:

• To provide further medical treatment for you e.g. from district nurses and hospital services.
• To help you get other services e.g. from the social work department. This requires your consent.
• When we have a duty to others e.g. in child protection cases anonymised patient information will also be used at local and national level to help the Health Board and Government plan services e.g. for diabetic care.

If you do not wish anonymous information about you to be used in such a way, please let us know.

Reception and administration staff require access to your medical records in order to do their jobs. These members of staff are bound by the same rules of confidentiality as the medical staff.

Freedom of Information

Information about the General Practitioners and the practice required for disclosure under this act can be made available to the public. All requests for such information should be made to the practice manager.

Access to Records

In accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998 and Access to Health Records Act, patients may request to see their medical records. Such requests should be made through the practice manager and may be subject to an administration charge. No information will be released without the patient consent unless we are legally obliged to do so.

Recording of Telephone calls

All calls both incoming and outgoing are recorded for training and monitoring purposes.

We may record telephone calls between you and the Surgery to:

• check for mistakes
• train staff
• prevent, detect, investigate and prosecute fraud
• help plan and make improvements to NHS services

We do this in the interests of offering a good service to our patients and to protect you and ourselves.

Sometimes, calls may not be recorded if:

• there’s a technical fault with the telephony system
• equipment is being used that does not allow recording

Your information will not be transferred outside the UK or European Economic Area.

Sharing your call recording

Your information may be shared with other organisations if they have a legal right to it.

How long we keep your call recording

We will delete call recordings up to 6 months after the call was made. This ensures that any subsequent investigations can be completed.  We have a right to delete calls before 6 months should the need arise.

Your rights

The information you provided will be managed as required by Data Protection law.

You have the right to receive a copy of the call recording.

You have the right to request that the call recording be deleted if you believe we are processing it for longer than necessary.