Under the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 2018 you have the right to see or have a copy of data we hold that can identify you, with some exceptions. You do not need to give a reason to see your data.

If you wish to access your data you must make the request to us. Under special circumstances, some information may be withheld. If you wish to have a copy of the information we hold about you, please contact the Practice Manager. By law we must respond to any subject access request within one calendar month.

You can also view certain aspects of your medical record directly through your online SystmOnline account, which links directly with your electronic medical record. Should you wish to set up a SystmOnline account, please visit the surgery with photographic identification.

A SystmOnline account will also grant you the ability to control your care by allowing you to:

• Book your own GP appointments in advance with a GP of your choice
• Order your own repeat prescriptions
• View your test results

Correcting your medical record

Following the review of your medical record, you have the right to query aspects of the medical record with your GP. If any factual inaccuracies are highlighted as a result of this, you have the right to request that these inaccuracies be removed from your record, provided that Saxonbrook Medical’s Caldicott Guardian agrees to do so.

There is no provision in English legislation to allow accurate medical information to be removed from a medical record, unless ordered to by a legal sanction.

We make every effort to give the best service possible to anyone who attends our practice.

However, we are aware that sometimes we will fall short of the mark. If this is so, we would wish to resolve the matter as quickly, and as amicably, as possible.

We would encourage you to speak to whoever you feel most comfortable with, whether that’s maybe with your doctor, nurse, receptionist or manager, but if you would prefer to persue your complaint in writing, please send it to the Practice Manager at the surgery address.

The Practice Manager
Saxonbrook Medical Centre
Maidenbower Square
Maidenbower
Crawley
West Sussex
RH10 7QH

You can also send us your concerns via our Feedback Form or downloading our Complaints Form and emailing directly to the practice. Additionally you can fill in one of the forms in the waiting room and hand into a member of the reception team.

If you have a complaint to make, please don’t be afraid to say how you feel. We welcome feedback to help us improve our standards and you will not be treated any differently because you have complained. We will just do our best to put right anything that has gone wrong.

If you do not feel comfortable in contacting us directly you have the right to approach NHS England and raise your complaint directly with them.

Find out more about the NHS complaints procedure…

Healthwatch

You may prefer to share your experience with Healthwatch, the independent local watchdog and champion for people who use health and/or social care services. Find out more…

The Health Service Ombudsman

The Health Service Ombudsman has published a booklet that describes the ‘six principles for remedy’ in relation to complaints handling and involves:

• Getting it right
• Being customer focused
• Being open and accountable
• Acting fairly and proportionately
• Putting things right
• Seeking continuous improvements

If you remain unhappy after everything has been done to try to resolve your concern or complaint you have the right to approach the Ombudsman.
Tel: 0345 015 4033
Email: phso.enquiries@ombudsman.org.uk
Write: Millbank Tower, Millbank, London SW1P 4QP.

The practice complies with 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.

If you are a registered patient you will have an electronic medical record held on our secure clinical system, which is called SystmOne.

A facility is now available whereby your record can be shared between Saxonbrook clinicians and other health professionals who are involved with your direct care, provided that they also use SystmOne as their clinical system.

There are strict rules about sharing and you will be asked by each provider of care to consent to “sharing in” and “sharing out”.

If you consent your care record held by your GP practice or medical service will be shared with other medical services involved in your care (such as district nursing, health visiting, physiotherapy, podiatry, Out of Hours (OOH) providers in our area, and Crawley Health Centre etc. You will get asked about “sharing in” and “sharing out” just once per provider. You have a choice to say yes or no and can change your mind at a later date as well.

If you have not consented to eDSM sharing previously through Saxonbrook and wish to share your record with one of the above providers (for example if you are visiting Crawley Hospitals Minor Injuries Unit), you will need to fulfil a data validation process before this can happen.

Information for Data Controllers on the eDSM2

Please be aware that if you chose to opt out of eDSM, this does not opt you out of the Summary Care Record (SCR), this must be requested separately.

Information about the General Practitioners 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.

NHS England requires that the net earnings of doctors engaged in the practice is published and the required disclosure is shown below. However, it should be noted that the prescribed method calculating earnings is potentially misleading because it takes no account of how much time doctors spend working in the practice and should not be used for any judgement about GP earnings, nor to make any comparisons with other practices.

The average earnings before taxation and national insurance and employee pension costs for GP’s working in Saxonbrook Medical in the last financial year was £86512. This is for 2 full time GP’s and 8 part time GP’s and 2 long term locum GP’s who worked in the practice for six months or more

Healthwatch are the independent local watchdog and champion for people who use health and/or social care services.

Healthwatch report on patient’s experiences anonymously with the aim of establishing the areas of local care which work well and working with care providers to improve the areas which need it.

As they are not directly affiliated with Saxonbrook, Healthwatch can not answer specific queries in relation to your care. They can however provide complaints advocacy support should you feel that you need help in making or a complaint or taking one further.

Phone: 0300 012 122

Email: helpdesk@healthwatchwestsussex.co.uk

Website: www.healthwatchwestsussex.co.uk

Independent Health Complaints Advocacy Service (IHCAS)

Through IHCAS, Healthwatch provide free and independent guidance and support for patients in making a complaint, as well as free material such as draft complaint letters and video tutorials to help you get the most out of the complaints process.

Email: ihcas@healthwatchwestsussex.co.uk

Commitments From The Practice

• To treat all with courtesy and respect.
• You will have the choice to be seen by a male or female doctor for routine appointments (if available).
• You will have appropriate treatment prescribed and clearly explained.
• You will be assessed by a clinician the same day if you have a medically urgent complaint, though you may not be able to see your usual doctor in some circumstances.
• You will be referred to a consultant when your GP feels it necessary.
• All referrals will usually be sent within 2 working days unless an internal second opinion is sought first.
• You can have access your Health Records via the online service once you have shown proof of identity.
• You will be offered appropriate advice by the Practice Team regarding keeping healthy
• Your complaints will be investigated thoroughly and promptly as per NHS complaints procedure. We endeavour to resolve complaints verbally but where a complaint requires investigation we will write to you with the outcome.
• All children will be offered Immunisations in line with NHS guidelines.
• We recognise your need to discuss your concerns in private and will ensure privacy for consultations and confidentiality at all times.
• You will have the option of a trained chaperone should you require one. Your chaperone will always be of your gender.
• We will endeavor to provide appropriate arrangements for patients with special circumstances, needs or communication difficulties. If this is the case please discuss this with your clinician or the practice team.
• In the same way as patients can choose their doctor, the doctors reserve the right to accept or remove a patient from their list. This may happen if a patient is unable to work cooperatively with the Practice.
• Your records, both written and computerised, will be kept secure and confidential at all times, in line with data protection guidelines, GDPR and NHS confidentiality policy.
• Waiting times at the surgery are usually kept to a minimum, but delays are sometime unavoidable and you will be advised if there is a delay of more than 10-15 minutes, and you will be offered the choice of waiting or making an alternative appointment.
• Non-NHS work e.g. insurance forms, will not be treated as a priority over NHS medical care, but the Practice will complete this work within statutory timelines.

Rights and Responsibilities of Patients

• You will treat practice staff with courtesy and respect.
• You will be a ‘patient’ patient.
• You will respect that we are working very hard to provide the best service we can for all our patients. Any violent, aggressive or abusive behaviour may lead to being removed from the practice list, and in extreme cases could lead to police involvement.
• You will notify us as soon as possible you are unable to keep an appointment as this allows other patients to be seen and keeps waiting times down.You will understand that our staff are limited in the information they can provide due to data protection. We can only divulge private information related to a patient either with their written consent or a legal mandate such as a power of attorney
• You will ring the practice after 10:30 if you have a non-urgent enquiry.
• You will be on time for your appointments and notify us as soon as possible if you need to cancel an appointment.
• Your clinician may not be able to see you if you are late, and persistent missed appointments may lead to being removed from the practice list.
• You will avoid delays by allowing at least 2 full working days when requesting a repeat prescription; repeat prescriptions will not be taken over the telephone (requests can be made by letter, email, via online request service or by visiting the practice)
• You will ring the practice after 10.30 if you have a non-urgent enquiry.
• There is no need for you to ring the practice for test results; most results are normal and, therefore we will contact you if a doctor has identified an abnormality. Alternatively you can access all your test results via the NHS App or SystmOnline; just ask reception for access to online services.
• You will inform us if you change address or telephone number – we may need to contact you urgently. You will also ask for family members at the same address to do the same
• You will make allowances when waiting in the surgery for the fact that emergency cases will have to be given priority.
• You will understand that there is a charge for non-NHS work e.g. holiday cancellation letters, insurance forms, and they will take up to six weeks to process as NHS work will need to take priority.

We record our telephone calls for two reasons, firstly to protect patients, staff and other health workers. Patients are protected by our having a record of our conversations with you, staff and other health workers are protected from potential abuse. Secondly we record some calls, because they can contain clinical information which could become part of your medical records. We also occasionally use recordings for staff training and quality control.

When you register with us we will make this clear to you; we will also make this clear to you each time you call the Surgery and via our website.

Calls that contain only administrative information, such as enquiries about appointments, are only retained for 4 weeks and are then routinely deleted.

Calls, or transcripts of calls, audio or audio-visual recordings or elements of the discussion you have with the clinicians that contain clinical information may be added to your medical records, but this will be clarified with you at the time.

The recordings are stored on hard drives kept in-house provided from our telephone supplier, X-on Surgery Connect who have no immediate access to them.

These recordings will not usually be shared outside the practice unless under a previously indicated guideline, for example a court order.

If we hold recordings that have not been deleted you can ask for copies via a subject access request.

As all calls are recorded, if you object to your call being recorded you have the right to request that the call be terminated and the correspondence occur in a different fashion, such as through the website, via email or at the reception desks.

Our CCTV audio and visual recordings are stored on hard drives kept in-house provided from our CCTV Suppliers, Swann and Scorpio, whose staff have no immediate access to them.

We are required by Articles in the General Data Protection Regulations to provide you with the information in the following 9 subsections.

* “Common Law Duty of Confidentiality”, common law is not written out in one document like an Act of Parliament. It is a form of law based on previous court cases decided by judges; hence, it is also referred to as ‘judge-made’ or case law. The law is applied by reference to those previous cases, so common law is also said to be based on precedent.

The general position is that if information is given in circumstances where it is expected that a duty of confidence applies, that information cannot normally be disclosed without the information provider’s consent.

In practice, this means that all patient information, whether held on paper, computer, visually or audio recorded, or held in the memory of the professional, must not normally be disclosed without the consent of the patient. It is irrelevant how old the patient is or what the state of their mental health is; the duty still applies.

Three circumstances making disclosure of confidential information lawful are:

• where the individual to whom the information relates has consented;
• where disclosure is in the public interest; and
• where there is a legal duty to do so, for example a court order

NHS England uses a national electronic record called the Summary Care Record (SCR) to support patient care.

It contains key information from your GP record. Your SCR provides authorised healthcare staff with faster, secure access to essential information about you in an emergency or when you need unplanned care, where such information would otherwise be unavailable.

Summary Care Records exist to improve the safety and quality of your care. SCR core information comprises:

• Any allergies you may have
• Adverse reactions to medication
• Your current medications.

An SCR with additional information can also include reason for medication, vaccinations, significant diagnoses / problems, significant procedures, anticipatory care information and end of life care information. Additional information can only be added to your SCR with your explicit consent.

Please be aware that if you choose to opt-out of SCR, NHS healthcare staff caring for you outside of this surgery may not be aware of your current medications, allergies you suffer from and any bad reactions to medicines you have had, in order to treat you safely in an emergency.

Your records will stay as they are now with information being shared by letter, email, fax or phone. If you wish to opt-out of having an SCR please return a completed opt-out form to the practice.

https://digital.nhs.uk

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.

Saxonbrook Medical holds your data in accordance with the latest data protection and confidentiality legislation.

We share medical records with health professionals directly involved with your care and treatment, however this will only be for specific reasons, such as during the referral and outpatient process in secondary care.

Some of your data is automatically copied to your Summary Care Records for the purpose of aiding potential emergency care. You have the right to opt out of the creation of a Summary Care Record.

Your data is also used to support national health campaigns such as Breast Cancer Screening, Diabetes Prevention and influenza vaccinations.

Anonymised data is used to verify the work we do for inspection, auditing and payment purposes.

All telephone calls made to and by us are recorded. These are kept securely and will only be accessed when a call requires further investigation; this could be during a follow up of a complaint or incident investigation.

NHS Digital’s improved collection of GP data will support vital health and care planning and research. NHS Digital: General Practice Data for Planning and Research (GPDPR) explains how and why your data is being used, and what to do if you don’t want your data shared.

Our Privacy Notices page outlines the purpose and legal basis of each type of data sharing between Saxonbrook Medical and an external entity.

This website also has its own Privacy Notice.