Confidentiality & Medical Records

The practice complies with General 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.

Telephone call recording

Incoming and outgoing calls at Manor House Lane and Marston Green Surgeries are automatically recorded.  This information is stored hosted cloud based system and can only be accessed by the practice manager / assistant practice manager if they wish to review a conversation that has been  held with a patient.  It is possible they may wish to use this recording for training, monitoring and dispute resolution. As well as actually recording conversations the system provides call data which allows us to see how long it takes us to answer the phone, how many calls come in and how we deal with them.  We hope to use this information to evaluate our service and plan future resources.

Freedom of Information

Information about the General Practioners 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 / Subject Access Requests

Since the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) at the end of May 2018 patients may make requests for copies of their medical records or parts thereof under a Subject Access Request (SAR's) these will be supplied free of charge, you will be asked to collect the requested items from surgery (ID will be required) and you will need to sign for them accepting responsibility for their safe keeping. If this facility is used excessively charges can be applied for copying etc under GDPR. SARs can also come from a 3rd party with the patients consent and these will also need to be signed for by the patient and then forwarded to the 3rd party by the patient.

In accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998, Access to Health Records Act and General Data Protection Regulations, no information will be released without the patient consent unless we are legally obliged to do so.