This privacy notice explains why the Dental Practice collects information about you and how that information may be used.
Health care professionals who provide you with care maintain records about your health and treatment or care you have received previously. These records are used to help provide you with the best possible healthcare.
NHS health care records may be electronic, paper or a mix of both, and we use a combination of working practices and technology to ensure that your information is kept confidential and secure. Records at this practice hold about you may include:
- Details about you, such as your name, address, carers name and emergency contact.
- Any contact the surgery has had with you, such as appointments, routine or emergency.
- Notes and reports about your health.
- Details about your treatment and care.
- Results from laboratories, tests or x-rays.
- Relevant information from other health care professionals, relatives or those who care for you.
To ensure the best possible care, your records are used to facilitate the care you receive. Information held about you may be used to protect the health of the public and to help us manage the NHS. Information may be used within the practice for clinical audit to monitor the quality of the service provided. There are strict measures in place so individual patients cannot be identified.
Every member of staff who works for an NHS organisation has a legal obligation to keep information about you confidential.
We are committed to protecting your privacy and will only use information collected lawfully in accordance with:
- Data Protection Act 1998 and general Data Protection Regulation 2016
- Human Rights Act 1998
- Common Law Duty of Confidentiality
- Health and social Act 2002
- NHS codes of confidentiality, information security and records management.
- Information: To share or not to share
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 any third party without your permission unless there are exceptional circumstances (i.e. life or death situations), where the law requires information to be passed on and/or in accordance with the new information sharing principle following Dame Fiona Caldicott’s sharing review (to share or not to share) where “the duty to share information can be as important as the duty to protect the patient confidentiality”. This means that health and social care professionals should have the confidence to share information in the best interests of their patients within the framework set out by the caldicott principles. They should be supported by the policies of their employers, regulators and professional bodies.
You will be informed who your data will be shared with and in some cases asked for explicit consent for this to happen.
Access to Personal Information
You have a right under the Data Protection Act 1998 to request access to view or to obtain copies of what information the surgery holds about you and to have it amended should it be inaccurate. In order to request this, you need to do the following:
- Your request must be in writing to the Practice /Dentist
- There may be a charge to have a printed copy of the information held about you.
- We are required to respond to you within 40 days
- In your request you will need to give adequate information e.g. full name. Address, dob, nhs number. This is so that your identity can be verified and your records located.
Objections
Should you have any concerns about how your information is managed at the practice, please contact the manager. If you are still unhappy following a review by the practice then you can complain to the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) via their website (www.ico.gov.uk)
If you are happy for your data to be extracted and used for purposes described in this privacy notice then you do not need to do anything. If you have any concerns about how your data is shared then please contact the practice.
The practice is registered with the ICO.