Privacy Notice – Connecting Your Care

This privacy notice explains why health and care providers collect information about you and how that information may be used. For additional information about our ‘Connecting Your Care’ programme please also see ‘Connecting Your Care’ leaflet and Frequently Asked Question or visit: www.swlondon.nhs.uk/connectingyourcare.

The health and care professionals who look after you maintain health and care records that contain details of any treatment or care you have received previously or are receiving. These records help to provide you with the best possible care.

NHS patient health and care records may be electronic, on paper or a mixture of both, and a combination of working practices and technology ensure your information is kept confidential and secure. Records which health and care providers hold about you may include the following information:

  • Details about you, such as address, contact details and next of kin
  • Any contact the health or care provider has had with you, such as appointments, clinic visits, emergency appointments, etc.
  • Notes/reports and assessments about your health and care
  • Details about your planned treatment and care
  • Results of investigations, such as blood tests, x-rays, etc.
  • Relevant information from other health and social care professionals, relatives or those who care for you
  • If you have had a social care assessment, the type of assessment and the date of the next planned review.

The information shared about you is used by the health and social care professionals looking after you to make sure they have the most up to date information available to them so that they can quickly assess you and make the best decisions or plans about your care. At the moment, each care organisation has a different system for managing your records, and there is no way for the information held in these records to be shared electronically in “real time”, i.e. immediately. This means that when a health or social care professional needs to know more about you, they must ask for this information by old fashioned methods, such as telephoning, faxing, or requesting paper copies of your records, all of which can take time, lead to losses of data, or gaps in what is provided.

Connecting your Care will introduce a new system that will provide a “connected” electronic view between each of these different systems so that the people looking after you can immediately see important information from each of the services that you use, to help them make the best decisions about your care.

We are required by law to provide you with the information in the following 9 subsections. We have also set out a list of definitions below.

1) Controller contact details

Mrs Teresa Chapman

2) Data Protection Officer contact details

Mrs Teresa Chapman

3) Purpose of the processing

Information will be shared in order to facilitate “Direct Care” that is delivered to the individual – that is, where a health or care organisation has direct contact with a patient or service user in order to provide them with immediate care or treatment.

Direct Patient Care is defined by the Caldicott Review in 2013 as a clinical, social or public health activity concerned with the prevention, investigation and treatment of illness and the alleviation of suffering of individuals. It includes supporting individuals’ ability to function and improve their participation in life and society. It includes the assurance of safe and high-quality care and treatment through local audit, the management of untoward or adverse incidents, person satisfaction including measurement of outcomes undertaken by one or more registered and regulated health or social care professionals and their team with whom the individual has a legitimate relationship for their care.

The processing of personal data in the delivery of direct care and for providers’ administrative purposes in this organisation, and in support of direct care elsewhere is supported under the following Article 6 and 9 conditions of the: Data Protection Act 2018/General Data Protection Regulation 2016:

Article 6(1)(e) ‘…necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority…’.

Article 9(2)(h) ‘necessary for the purposes of preventative or occupational medicine for the assessment of the working capacity of the employee, medical diagnosis, the provision of health or social care or treatment or the management of health or social care systems and services…”

Health and social care services are under legal obligations to share information for the purposes of direct care.

We will also recognise your rights established under UK case law collectively known as the “Common Law Duty of Confidentiality”*