Your Information
To enable the Practice to operate, it is vital that information about your medical treatment is recorded when necessary. This may be on computer. Health professionals use this information and add to it, making a complete history of your healthcare. Everyone working for the NHS has a legal duty to keep information about you confidential. All members of the Primary Health Care Team have access to and are trained to respect their duty of confidentiality and have this written in their contracts.
The Practice is registered in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998 and has an appointed Caldicott Guardian, who is responsible for ensuring that the Caldicott principles are applied when handling patient information.
Violence Statement
Our staff are courteous to patients at all time and we expect patients to be courteous to doctors and staff at all time.
Verbal abuse and physical violence are a growing concern for staff working within the NHS. The Practice staff have the right to care for others without fear of being attacked or abused. If a patient is verbally abusive to staff, or persons present on the practice premises, the Practice will initially give the patient a written warning. Should the Practice have any further concerns that patient's name will be removed from the Practice List and we shall cease to be responsible for his/her medical care. Violence towards staff under no circumstances will be tolerated. The Police will be called, and the person prosecuted. The Practice will immediately give notice to cease to be responsible for that patient's medical care.
Freedom of Information
The Freedom of Information (FOI) Act was passed on 30 November 2000. It gives a general right of access to all types of recorded information held by public authorities, with full access granted in January 2005. The Act sets out exemptions to that right and places certain obligations on public authorities.
FOI replaced the Open Government Code of Practice, which has been in operation since 1994.
Data Protection and FOI – how do the two interact?
The Data Protection Act 1998 came into force on 1 March 2000. It provides living individuals with a right of access to personal information held about them. The right applies to all information held in computerised form and also to non-computerised information held in filing systems structured so that specific information about particular individuals can retrieved readily.
Individuals already have the right to access information about themselves (personal data), which is held on computer and in some paper files under the Data Protection Act 1998.
The right also applies to those archives that meet these criteria. However, the right is subject to exemptions, which will affect whether information is provided. Requests will be dealt with on a case by case basis.
The Freedom of Information Act and the Data Protection Act are the responsibility of the Lord Chancellor’s Department. A few of its strategic objectives being:
- To improve people’s knowledge and understanding of their rights and responsibilities
- Seeking to encourage an increase in openness in the public sector
- Monitoring the Code of Practice on Access to Government Information
- Developing a data protection policy which properly balances personal information privacy with the need for public and private organisations to process personal information
The Data Protection Act does not give third parties rights of access to personal information for research purposes.
The FOI Act does not give individuals access to their personal information, though if a request is made, the Data Protection Act gives the individual this right. If the individual chooses to make this information public it could be used alongside non-personal information gained by the public under the terms of the FOI Act.