It covers information we collect directly from you (that you have either provided to us, or from consultations with staff members), or we collect from other organisations who manage your care (such as hospitals or community services).
We are required by law to maintain records about your health and treatment, or the care you have received within any NHS service.
How is my information collected and looked after?
Who is responsible for my information?
Allerton Medical Centre is the data controller for your information and is responsible for looking after your record while you are a registered patient.
The person with the key responsibility for data protection and security is Lindsay Gollin, Business Manager.
Our Data Protection Officer is Aaron Linden and can be contacted on wyicb-leeds.dpo@nhs.net.
Any queries or concerns should be raised with the practice first.
Our Commitment to Data Privacy and Confidentiality
As a Practice, we are committed to protecting your privacy and will only process data in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Data Protection Act 2018, the Common Law Duty of Confidentiality, professional codes of practice, the Human Rights Act 1998 and other appropriate legislation.
Everyone working for the Practice has a legal and contractual duty to keep information about you confidential. All our staff receive appropriate and ongoing training to ensure that they are aware of their personal responsibilities and their obligations to uphold confidentiality.
Staff are trained to ensure how to recognise and report any incident and the organisation has procedures for investigating, managing and learning lessons from any incidents that occur.
All identifiable information that we hold about you in an electronic format will be held securely and confidentially in secure hosted servers that pass stringent security standards.
Any companies or organisations we use we may use to process your data are also legally and contractually bound to operate under the same security and confidentiality requirements.
All identifiable information we hold about you within paper records is kept securely and confidentially in lockable cabinets with access restricted to appropriately authorised staff.
As an organisation we are required to provide annual evidence of our compliance with all applicable laws, regulations and standards through the Data Security and Protection toolkit.
Your information will not be sent outside of the United Kingdom where the laws do not protect your privacy to the same extent as the law in the UK. We will never sell any information about you.
In addition to our Data Protection Officer, we also have a senior person within the practice who is responsible for protecting the confidentiality of our records and ensuring that any use of your data is fair and appropriate- this person is the Caldicott Guardian. The Caldicott Guardian for the practice is: Dr Abiye Hector-Goma.
The practice is registered with the Information Commissioners Office as a Data Controller- our registration number is: Z7184713 and you can view our registration here Information Commissioners – Data protection register – entry details (ico.org.uk)
We will endeavour to maintain our duty of confidentiality to you at all times and will only share data about you if we genuinely believe that it would improve the care you provide for you.
Other than for the purposes of direct care or indirect care (such as healthcare planning), we will only share your information without your permission when we are required to do so under exceptional circumstances (such as a serious risk to yourself and others) or if it is required by law.
The categories of personal data we hold and the sources we obtain them from
- Details about you, such as your name, address, carers, biological sex, gender identity, ethnic origin, date of birth, legal representatives and emergency contact details are collected from you when you register with the practice via the GMS1 form and new patient questionnaire you fill in when your register.
- Information that you provide about your health when you consult with healthcare professionlas at eh practice which will be recorded in your notes.
- Any contact the surgery has with you, such as appointments, clinic visits, emergency appointments, etc. are recorded on our clinical system
- Notes and reports about your health- your historic notes are transferred to us from your old practice- this can happen electronically and your paper notes are transferred via an organisation called Primary Care Support England
- Results of investigations such as laboratory tests, x-rays, etc. which are sent to the practice electronically from hospitals
- Any consultations you may have had with “extended access” hubs with which the practice is part.
- We are routinely informed of any A&E visits or outpatient appointments at local hospitals
- We are routinely advised of any contact with out of hours providers or NHS111
- We are hold details of any other relevant information from other health professionals, relatives or those who care for you. All information flows within the practice are routinely mapped as part of our GDPR compliance and compliance with the Data Security and Protection toolkit.
How is my information stored?
Our practice uses a clinical records programme called SystmOne which is provided by a Data Processor called TPP.
All the personal data we process is processed by our staff in the UK however for the purposes of IT hosting and maintenance this information may be located on servers within the European Union.
No 3rd parties have access to your personal data unless the law allows them to do so and appropriate safeguards have been put in place such as a Data Processor (as above). We have a Data Protection regime in place to oversee the effective and secure processing of your personal and or special category (sensitive, confidential) data.
Any information held in paper records is stored securely at the practice. We use a combination of working practices and technology to ensure that your information is kept confidential and secure.
When is my information shared?
We are committed to protecting your privacy and will only use information collected lawfully in accordance with:
- Data Protection legislation
- Human Rights Act 1998
- Common Law Duty of Confidentiality
- Health and Social Care Act 2012
- NHS Codes of Confidentiality, Information Security and Records Management
- Information: To Share or Not to Share Review
Change of details
It is important that you tell the person treating you if any of your details such as your name or address have changed or if any of your details such as date of birth is incorrect in order for this to be amended. You have a responsibility to inform us of any changes so our records are accurate and up to date for you.
Why do we collect information about you and how we use your personal data.
As health professionals, we maintain records about you in order to support your care. By registering with the practice, your existing records will be transferred to us from your previous practice so that we can keep them up to date while you are our patient. If you do not have a previous medical record (a new-born child or coming from overseas, for example), we will create a medical record for you. We take great care to ensure that your information is kept securely, that it is up to date, accurate and used appropriately. All of our staff are trained to understand their legal and professional obligations to protect your information and will only look at your information if they need to.
For provision of direct care:
In the practice, individual staff will only look at what they need in order to carry out such tasks as booking appointments, making referrals, giving health advice or provide you with care.
We share information about you with other health professionals where they have a genuine need for it to support your care. More details about specific organisations who may receive your data for the purpose of your direct care are below:
| Recipient of data | Reason or purpose |
| Leeds Care Record | Primary, secondary or emergency care |
| Summary Care Record (SCR) | Secondary or emergency care |
| Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust | Secondary or emergency care |
| Other national providers of health care who you choose to be referred to, in consultation with your healthcare professional | Secondary or specialist care |
| Leeds & York Partnership Foundation Trust | Mental health & learning disability services |
| Mid-Yorkshire Hospitals Trust | Diabetic eye-screening services |
| Leeds Community Healthcare Trust | District Nursing and other community services |
| NHS National Diabetes Prevention Programme | Information and lifestyle education |
| Local Care Direct | Out of Hours primary care provider |
| Leeds City Council | Social Care services |
| Connect Well/PEP or other similar service | Social prescribing |
| “One You” | Provider of healthy lifestyle services |
| Forward Leeds | Provider of drug & alcohol services |
| Federated GP services and Primary Care Networks | Providers of extended access appointments over the telephone and at local hubs and other services |
From time to time we may offer you referrals to other providers, specific to your own health needs- in these cases we will discuss the referral with you and advise you that we will be sharing your information (generally by referral) with those organisations.
We may also use your contact details to send you details of our feedback survey called the Friends & Family test. Any feedback that you provide in response is received anonymised and published in the same way.
Within Primary Care Networks
All practices in the UK are members of a Primary Care Network (PCN), which is a group of practices who have chosen to work together and with local community, mental health, social care, pharmacy, hospital and voluntary services to provide care to their patients. Such services may include a shared woundcare clinic or hub for vaccinations.
PCNs are built on the core of current primary care services and enable greater provision of proactive, personalised, coordinated and more integrated health and social care.
We are members of Chapeltown PCN along with St Martin’s Practice, Chapeltown Family Surgery and Woodhouse Medical Practice.
This arrangement means that practices within the same PCN may share data with other practices within the PCN, for the purpose of patient care (such as extended hours appointments and other services). Each practice within the PCN is part of a stringent data sharing agreement that means that all patient data shared is treated with the same obligations of confidentiality and data security.
For commissioning and healthcare planning purposes:
In some cases, for example when looking at population healthcare needs, some of your data may be shared (usually in such a way that you cannot be identified from it). The following organisations may use data in this way to inform policy or make decisions about general provision of healthcare, either locally or nationally.
- Leeds City Council: Public Health, Adult or Child Social Care Services
- Leeds Clinical Commissioning Group (or their approved data processors)
- NHS Digital (Formerly known as (HSCIC)
- Other data processors which you will be informed of as appropriate.
In order to comply with its legal obligations we may send data to NHS Digital when directed by the Secretary of State for Health under the Health and Social Care Act 2012.
This practice contributes to local & national clinical audits and will send the data which are required by NHS Digital when the law allows. This may include demographic data, such as date of birth, and information about your health which is recorded in coded form, for example, the clinical code for diabetes or high blood pressure. .
For research purposes:
Research data is usually shared in a way that individual patients are non-identifiable. Occasionally where research requires identifiable information you may be asked for your explicit consent to participate in specific research projects.
The surgery will always gain your consent before releasing any information for this purpose, unless the research has been granted a specific exemption from the Confidentiality Advisory Group of the Health Research Authority
Where specific information is asked for, such as under the National Diabetes audit, you will be given the choice to opt of the audit.
For safeguarding purposes, life or death situations or other circumstances when we are required to share information:
We may also disclose your information to others in exceptional circumstances (i.e., life or death situations) or in accordance with Dame Fiona Caldicott’s information sharing review (Information to share or not to share).
For example, your information may be shared in the following circumstances:
- When we have a duty to others e.g. in child protection cases
- Where we are required by law to share certain information such as the birth of a new baby, infectious diseases that may put you or others at risk or where a Court has decided we must.
When you request to see your information or ask us to share it with someone else:
If you ask us to share your data, often with an insurance company, solicitor, employer or similar third party, we will only do so with your explicit consent. Usually the requesting organisation will ask you to confirm your consent, often in writing or electronically. We check that consent before releasing any data and you can choose to see the information before we send it.
What is the lawful basis that we use to process your information?
We are required to tell you the legal basis that is used for the various ways we process and use your data. In order to process your personal data, we must specify a lawful basis and if we process any personal data that is deemed to be “special category” data we must also specify a separate condition for processing special category data.
The following table sets the main ways your personal data may be used and the corresponding legal basis and category of data. Each purpose is covered in more detail within this notice to explain what these mean in more practical terms.
The details of transfers of the personal data to any third countries or international organisations.
As a GP surgery, the only occasions when this would occur would be if you specifically requested this to occur- the practice will never routinely send patient data outside of the UK where the laws do not protect your privacy to the same extent as the law in the UK.
How long does the practice hold my information?
As long as you are registered as a patient with Allerton Medical Centre your paper records are held at the practice along with your GP electronic record. If you register with a new practice, they will initiate the process to transfer your records. The electronic record is transferred to the new practice across a secure NHS data-sharing network and all practices aim to process such transfers within a maximum of 8 working days. The paper records are then transferred via Primary Care Services England (operated on behalf of NHS England by Capita) which can take longer. Primary Care Services England also look after the records of any patient not currently registered with a practice and the records of anyone who has died.
Once your records have been forwarded to your new practice (or after your death forwarded to Primary Care Services England), a cached version of your electronic record is retained in the practice and classified as “inactive”. If anyone has a reason to access an inactive record, they are required to formally record that reason and this action is audited regularly to ensure that all access to inactive records is valid and appropriate. We may access this for clinical audit (measuring performance), serious incident reviews, or statutory report completion (e.g., for HM Coroner).
A summary of retention periods for medical records can be found on the BMA website
The rights available to you in respect of data processing
Under the GDPR all patients have certain rights in relation to the information which the practice holds about them. Not all of these will rights apply equally, as certain rights are not available depending on situation and the lawful basis used for the processing- for reference these rights may not apply are where the lawful basis we use (as shown in the above table in the section on “lawful bases”) is:
- Processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller – in these cases the rights of erasure and portability will not apply.
- Legal Obligation – in these cases the rights of erasure, portability, objection, automated decision making and profiling will not apply
The right to be informed:
You have the right to be informed of how your data is being used. The propose of this document is to advise you of this right and how your data is being used by the practice
The right of access:
You have the right of access You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information- this right always applies. There are some exemptions, which means you may not always receive all the information we process.
The right to rectification:
You have the right to ask us to rectify information you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete. This right always applies.
The right to erasure
You have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances- This will not generally apply in the matter of health care data
The right to restrict processing
You have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your information in certain circumstances– You have to right to limit the way in which your data is processed if you are not happy with the way the data has been managed.
The right to object
You have the right to object to processing if you disagree with the way in which part of your data is processed you can object to this- please bear in mind that this may affect the medical services we are able to offer you.
Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling.
Your rights in relation to automated processing– Sometimes your information may be used to run automated calculations. These can be as simple as calculating your Body Mass Index or ideal weight but they can be more complex and used to calculate your probability of developing certain clinical conditions, and we will discuss these with you if they are a matter of concern.
Typically, the ones used in the practice may include:
Qrisk– a cardiovascular risk assessment tool which uses data from your record such as your age, blood pressure, cholesterol levels etc to calculate the probability of you experiencing a cardiovascular event over the next ten years.
Qdiabetes– a diabetes risk assessment tool which uses your age, blood pressure, ethnicity data etc to calculate the probability of you developing diabetes.
CHADS – an assessment tool which calculates the risk of a stroke occurring for patients with atrial Fibrillation
This is not an exhaustive list- other tools may be used depending on your personal circumstances and health needs, however whenever we use these profiling tools, we assess the outcome on a case-by-case basis. No decisions about individual care are made solely on the outcomes of these tools, they are only used to help us us assess your possible future health and care needs with you and we will discuss these with you.
The right to data portability
Your right to data portability This only applies to information you have given us- you have the right to ask that we transfer the information you gave us from one organisation to another, or give it to you. The right only applies if we are processing information based on your consent or under a contract, and the processing is automated, so will only apply in very limited circumstances
The right to withdraw consent
Because under the provisions of Data Protection Law most of the data processing activities carried out by the practice are not done under the “lawful basis” of consent you cannot withdraw consent as such, however if you are not happy with the way your data is being processed you do have the right to object and the right to ask us to restrict processing.
Quick Guide to Type 1 & National Data Opt-outs (Type 2 Opt-outs)
Patient data from GP medical records kept by GP practices in England is used every day to improve health, care and services through planning and research. This can help to find better treatments and improve patient care. The NHS is introducing an improved way to share this information – called the General Practice Data for Planning and Research (GPDPR) data collection.
NHS Digital will collect, analyse, publish and share this patient data to improve health and care services for everyone. This includes:
- informing and developing health and social care policy
- planning and commissioning health and care services
- taking steps to protect public health (including managing and monitoring the coronavirus pandemic)
- in exceptional circumstances, providing you with individual care
- enabling healthcare and scientific research
Any data that NHS Digital collects will only be used for health and care purposes. It is never shared with marketing or insurance companies. Read more here.
NHS Digital will not collect any patient data for patients who have already registered a Type 1 Opt-out in line with current policy. If this changes patients who have registered a Type 1 Opt-out will be informed.
If you do not want your patient data shared with NHS Digital, you can register a Type 1 Opt-out with us. You can register a Type 1 Opt-out at any time. You can also change your mind at any time and withdraw a Type 1 Opt-out.
If you register a Type 1 Opt-out after your patient data has already been shared with NHS Digital, no more of your data will be shared with NHS Digital from this date. NHS Digital will however still hold the patient data which was shared with us before you registered the Type 1 Opt-out.
If you have already registered a Type 1 Opt-out with your GP practice your data will not be shared with NHS Digital.
What do you need to do?
Are you are happy for your data to be shared as above? If you haven’t previously opted out then you do not need to do anything.
Type 1 OPT-OUT – to stop sharing your GP data with NHS digital (or to opt back in, if you have previous opted out)
Complete this OPT OUT FORM (you can also use this form to opt back in if you change your mind)
If you are not able to print or complete this form, call into either of our sites and we can give you a copy to complete.
Then either:
- Hand the form into reception
- post it to us at: Allerton Medical Centre, 6 Montreal Avenue, LEEDS, LS7 4LF
- email it to allerton.westfield@nhs.net
Type 2 OPT-OUT (Also known as National Data Opt-out)
If you do not want NHS Digital to share your patient data with anyone else for purposes beyond your own care, which has been already shared with them (or to opt back in, if you have previous opted out)
NOTE: You can only do this by either calling 0300 303 5678 or completing the online form via YOUR NHS MATTERS – as a GP practice we cannot opt you out of Type 2 (National Data Opt-out) data sharing.
The right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority.
If you are happy for your information to be used, and where necessary shared, for the purposes described in this notice then you do not need to do anything.
Should you have any concerns about how your information is managed at the practice, please contact us.
If you are still unhappy following a review by the GP practice, you can then complain to the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) via:
- Their website: www.ico.org.uk
- Email: casework@ico.org.uk
- Telephone: 0303 123 1113 (local rate) or 01625 545 745
- Or by mail: The Information Commissioner, Wycliffe House, Water lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF
