Confidentiality

You have a right to confidentiality. Occasionally it may be necessary to allow other health care professionals to have information from your records, this is usually if they are providing a service to you. If you have any concerns regarding this, please contact the Practice Manager.

Summary Care Record

In common with all GP surgeries, Olive Medical Practice is required to extract and upload information from GP records to the national Summary Care Record (SCR) database, one of a number of NHS databases.

Your SCR contains the following basic information:

• the medication you are taking
• your allergies
• any bad reactions you may have had to certain medications

It also contains your name, address, date of birth and NHS number, which helps to identify you correctly.

A SCR is used in a number of healthcare settings and will provide healthcare professionals with any information they wouldn’t otherwise have.

For example, when you are visiting an urgent care centre or being admitted to a hospital, staff could view your SCR and check which medications you’re on and any allergies you may have.

The information will potentially be available to healthcare professionals across England, for the purpose of your direct clinical care (a “primary” use of your information).

The SCR is therefore a nationally available database.

The information is extracted and uploaded to NHS Digital, who is therefore the data controller for the Summary Care Record database.

Who can access the Summary Care Record?

Only authorised healthcare professionals directly involved in your care can access your SCR. Your SCR won’t be used for any other purposes.

The person viewing your SCR:

• needs to have an NHS Smartcard with a chip and passcode
• will only see the information they need to do their job
• will have their details recorded every time they look at your record

In addition, the healthcare professional must seek your permission if they need to look at your SCR. If they can’t ask you because you are unconscious or otherwise unable to communicate, they may decide to look at your record because doing so is in your best interest.

This access is recorded and checked by the privacy officer of the organisation to ensure it is appropriate.

If you do not wish to have, or continue to have, a Summary Care Record they you can opt-out at any time. If you do opt-out, your uploaded data will be “blanked”, no one will be able to access it, and no further information about you will be uploaded from your GP record. If you do opt-out or if you have already opted out, you can opt back in at any time and have a Summary Care Record created.

Further information about Summary Care Records is available from:

• http://www.summarycarerecord.info/
• www.digital.nhs.uk/summary-care-records/patients

If you wish to opt-out, please ask at Reception for a form to complete.

Secondary uses of your medical records

You have the right to control how medical information about you is processed, used, shared, disseminated or sold for purposes other than  your direct medical care – this is called secondary uses (or purposes)

Secondary uses include projects involved in risk stratification, “population health management”, national clinical audits, research, healthcare planning, commissioning of healthcare services by CCGs, commercial or even political uses.

You can control your personal confidential information by expressing an objection, or opting out to the surgery.

We will then add a special READcode to your GP record.

When this code is present in your GP record, it should prevent identifiable information about you being extracted from your GP record and being uploaded to any other organisation for purposes other than your direct care.

You will still be invited to cervical screening, breast screening, bowel cancer screening, diabetic retinopathy screening, abdominal aortic aneurysm screening, and any other current or future national screening programmes, if you are eligible – the opt-out does not prevent these programmes in any way.

Nor will an opt-out prevent you from taking part in medical research with your explicit consent. If you wish to opt out of secondary uses of information from your GP record, then please ask for a “Opt-out Form” from Reception.

The General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) are a new law that determines how your personal data is processed, kept safe and the legal rights that you have in relation to your own data. The regulations applies from 25th May 2018 and will apply even after the UK leaves the European Union (EU).

What does GDPR mean for patients?

The GDPR sets out the key principles about processing data for staff or patients.

• Data must be processed lawfully, fairly and transparently
• It must be collected with specific, explicit and legitimate purposes
• It must be limited to what is necessary for the purposes for which it is processed
• Information must be accurate and kept up to date
• Data must be held securely
• It can only be retained for as long as is necessary for the reasons it was collected

There are also stronger rights for patients regarding the information that the Practice holds about them, these include:

• Being informed about how their data is used
• Patients to have access to their own data
• Patients can ask to have incorrect information changed
• Restrict how their data is used
• Move their patient data from one health organisation to another
• The right to object to their patient information being processed (in certain circumstances)

What is GDPR?

GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulations and is a new piece of legislation that will supersede the Data Protection Act. It will not only apply to the UK and EU; it covers anywhere in the world in which data about EU citizens is processed.

The GDPR is similar to the Data Protection Act (DPA) 1998 (which the practice already complied with) but strengthens many of the DPA’s principles. The main changes are:

• Practices need to comply with subject access requests (SAR’s)
• Where we need your consent to process data, the consent must be freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous
• There are new, special protections for patient data
• The Information Commissioner’s Office must be notified within 72 hours of a data breach
• Higher fines for data breaches

What is ‘Patient Data’?

Patient data is information that relates to a single person, such as his/her diagnosis, name, age, earlier medical history etc.

What is ‘Consent’?

 Consent is permission from a patient – an individual’s consent is defined as:

“Any freely given specific and informed indication of his wishes by which the data subject signifies his agreement to personal data relating to him being processed”

The changes to GDPR means that we must get explicit permission from patients when using their data. This is to protect your right to privacy, and we may ask you to provide consent to do certain things, like contact you or record certain information about you in your clinical records.

Individuals also have the right to withdraw their consent at any time.

Privacy Notice for Patients

Childrens Privacy Notice

Privacy Notice

All GP practices are required to declare the mean earnings (e.g. average) for GPs working to deliver NHS services to patients at
each practice.

The average pay for GPs working at the surgery in the last financial year 2022/2023 before tax and National Insurance was £66,255. This is for 3 part time GPs and 4 locum GPs who worked in the practice for more than 6 months.

Olive Medical Practice always welcomes suggestions on how we can improve the services we offer. Suggestions can be made in person, by telephone or in writing.

Olive Medical Practice endeavors to provide the best possible care for all our patients at all times. If however you are unhappy with any of the services we provide, please do not hesitate to contact us in person or by telephone and we will endeavor to rectify any problems or issues as soon as possible.

How to complain

In the first instance, please discuss your complaint with the staff member concerned. Where the issue cannot be resolved, please contact the Practice Manager, Donna Middleton who will try to resolve the issue and offer you further advice on the complaints procedure.

If your problem still cannot be resolved and you wish to make a formal complaint, please let us know as soon as possible in writing, ideally within a matter of days. This will enable us to get a clear picture of the circumstances surrounding the complaint.

We do endeavor to solve all problems in person or by telephone, but if you wish to make a formal complaint, please put your complaint in writing and address it to:

Donna Middleton (Practice Manager)  (Complaints Manager)
Olive Medical Practice
3 Lime Street
Blackburn
BB1 7EP

If you wish to view a copy of our Patient Complaints Leaflet, please ask at Reception.

You don’t ever need to worry about the service you receive in future being adversely affected because you have made a complaint. We take all comments seriously and only use the information to review our services and make improvements, where needed.

Patient Advisory Liaison Service (PALS)

PALS provide a confidential service designed to help patients get the most from the NHS. PALS can tell you more about the NHS complaints procedure and may be able to help resolve your complaint informally.

Your local PALS office can be contacted on: 0800 218 2333

For information on feedback and complaints to NHS England, please visit the link below:

https://www.nhs.uk/nhsengland/complaints-and-feedback/pages/nhs-complaints.aspx

Zero Tolerance Policy

Olive Medical Practice has adopted the ‘Zero Tolerance’ Policy.

The NHS operate a zero tolerance policy with regard to violence and abuse and the practice has the right to remove violent patients from the list with immediate effect in order to safeguard practice staff, patients and other persons. Violence in this context includes actual or threatened physical violence or verbal abuse which leads to fear for a person’s safety. In this situation we will notify the patient in writing of their removal from the list and record in the patient’s medical records the fact of the removal and the circumstances leading to it.

Equality Statement

There will be no discrimination by this practice related to sexual orientation, race, colour or creed of patients. Confidentiality will be maintained at all times.