Your Medical Records

Requests for medical records

You are entitled to request a copy of your medical records. Please ask in reception for further details. Please note that the request may take up to 2 weeks to process.

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Access to online summary medical records

You can access a summary of your medical records online. This will enable you to view details such as your medications, allergies and adverse reactions through a secure and confidential website.

To use the facility you will need to be registered on Vision Patient Services, with your own personal login. To register for online appointment booking you will need to bring in some form of photo ID for us to verify, complete the application form and then you will be given access to this service.

Access to medical records from ‘hub’ practices

As part of the Richmond GP Alliance we are currently able to offer appointments at four other local surgeries. These appointments can be booked through our practice and are available Monday to Sunday from 8am to 8pm. If you have an appointment at one of these hub practices the GP there will be able to access your medical records – you will be asked for your consent before they do so.

Data Sharing Schemes

There are currently three different data sharing schemes running nationally – Local Data Sharing, the Summary Care record and NHS Digital Data and Information Collection Data sets.

NHS Summary Care Record

The NHS Summary Care Record (SCR) has been implemented in this area. The SCR will be held confidentially and will only be available to other NHS healthcare staff involved in your care. It will contain details of medications you are on or cannot take, your name, address, date of birth and NHS number and any allergies that you have. If you would like further details of the SCR or an opt-out form please ask at reception.

Practice Privacy Policy

In order to comply with data protection legislation, this notice has been designed to inform you of what you need to know about the personal information we process. This is your assurance that we are complying with our legal obligation to you and a good opportunity for you to understand or exercise your information rights.

We are legally required to tell you:

• • What personal information we use
  • Why we need your personal information
  • The lawful basis for processing your personal information i.e. legitimate reasons for collecting, keeping, using and sharing it
  • How we use, store, protect and dispose of your personal information
  • How long we keep it for and who we may share it with
  • About your information rights
  • How to report a complaint or concern

Please find more information about this policy here: Privacy Policy

National Diabetes Audit

This practice will be taking part in an important national project about diabetes care and treatment in the NHS. To take part we will share information about your diabetes care and treatment with the NDA. The type of information, and how it is shared, is controlled by law and enforced by strict rules of confidentiality and security.

For more information see the NDA webpage at http://www.content.digital.nhs.uk/nda.

If you do not want your information to be used, please inform a receptionist. This will not affect your care.

How we use your data for research

The importance of medical records to improving public health

Research is important to the NHS and benefits us all, whether we are fit and healthy or suffering from an illness or condition. Research helps us to understand the cause of disease, prevent us from becoming ill, develop safe treatments and improve the health care we receive.

Whenever you visit your doctor or use an NHS service, your electronic health record is updated. This record contains important information about your health and describes the care that you have received. This information in health records is vital for medical research.

For 30 years, hundreds of GP practices across the UK have contributed information in patient records to the CPRD (Clinical Practice research Datalink) to support medical research to improve patient and public health including:

Answering important questions about what causes illness and how to prevent and treat it

Monitoring the safety of vaccines and medicines

Understanding possible side effects of treatments in patients

Only anonymised patient data is provided to researchers.

Protecting your identity and confidentiality

Your information is protected in the following ways:

You cannot be identified from the information sent to CPRD from GP practices. CPRD never receives any personal identifying details from your GP such as your name, address, NHS number or date of birthCPRD only provides anonymised health data to researchers

Data can only be used for research to improve patient and public health

All research applications must be reviewed and approved by an expert independent scientific committee

CPRD is reviewed each year* to make sure its services meet ethical and legal requirements

Data is held securely by CPRD and researchers must follow strict terms and conditions when carrying out any research

Health Data Collection and Health Observatory

The staff at this practice record information about you and your health so that you can receive the right care and treatment. We need to record this information, together with the details of the care you receive, so that it is available each time we see you.
The information recorded about you may also be used for reasons other than your personal care, for example, to help to protect the health of the general public, to plan for the future, to train staff and to carry out medical and other health research or studies.
Thus, we are involved in a health observatory based on anonymised patient information. The reasonable security measures and anonymisation processes are in place to comply with the relevant data protection regulations. If you would like to opt out of this data collection scheme, please let your doctor know and your records will not be collected for use for this Observatory. This will not affect your care in any way.
If anything to do with the Observatory or derivate research would require that you provide additional information about yourself, you will be contacted by your GP to see if you are wilting to take part; you will not be identified in any published results.
You have a right of access to your health records. If at any time you would like to know more, or have any concerns about how we use your information, please ask reception for more details.
A list of published research using the THIN database is available upon request. Please contact Michelle Page on telephone number 020 7501 7540 or email info@thehealth-improvementnetwork.co.uk for a copy.

General Practice Transparency Notice for GPES Data for Pandemic Planning and Research (COVID-19)

This practice is supporting vital coronavirus (COVID-19) planning and research by sharing your data with NHS Digital.

The health and social care system is facing significant pressures due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. Health and care information is essential to deliver care to individuals, to support health, social care and other public services and to protect public health. Information will also be vital in researching, monitoring, tracking and managing the coronavirus outbreak. In the current emergency it has become even more important to share health and care information across relevant organisations. This practice is supporting vital coronavirus planning and research by sharing your data with NHS Digital, the national safe haven for health and social care data in England.

Our legal basis for sharing data with NHS Digital

NHS Digital has been legally directed to collect and analyse patient data from all GP practices in England to support the coronavirus response for the duration of the outbreak. NHS Digital will become the controller under the General Data Protection Regulation 2016 (GDPR) of the personal data collected and analysed jointly with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, who has directed NHS Digital to collect and analyse this data under the COVID-19 Public Health Directions 2020 (COVID-19 Direction).

All GP practices in England are legally required to share data with NHS Digital for this purpose under the Health and Social Care Act 2012 (2012 Act). More information about this requirement is contained in the data provision notice issued by NHS Digital to GP practices.

Under GDPR our legal basis for sharing this personal data with NHS Digital is Article 6(1)(c) – legal obligation. Our legal basis for sharing personal data relating to health, is Article 9(2)(g) – substantial public interest, for the purposes of NHS Digital exercising its statutory functions under the COVID-19 Direction.

The type of personal data we are sharing with NHS Digital

The data being shared with NHS Digital will include information about patients who are currently registered with a GP practice or who have a date of death on or after 1 November 2019 whose record contains coded information relevant to coronavirus planning and research. The data contains NHS Number, postcode, address, surname, forename, sex, ethnicity, date of birth and date of death for those patients. It will also include coded health data which is held in your GP record such as details of:

diagnoses and findings

medications and other prescribed items

investigations, tests and results

treatments and outcomes

vaccinations and immunisations

How NHS Digital will use and share your data

NHS Digital will analyse the data they collect and securely and lawfully share data with other appropriate organisations, including health and care organisations, bodies engaged in disease surveillance and research organisations for coronavirus response purposes only. These purposes include protecting public health, planning and providing health, social care and public services, identifying coronavirus trends and risks to public health, monitoring and managing the outbreak and carrying out of vital coronavirus research and clinical trials. The British Medical Association, the Royal College of General Practitioners and the National Data Guardian are all supportive of this initiative.

NHS Digital has various legal powers to share data for purposes relating to the coronavirus response. It is also required to share data in certain circumstances set out in the COVID-19 Direction and to share confidential patient information to support the response under a legal notice issued to it by the Secretary of State under the Health Service (Control of Patient Information) Regulations 2002 (COPI Regulations).

Legal notices under the COPI Regulations have also been issued to other health and social care organisations requiring those organisations to process and share confidential patient information to respond to the coronavirus outbreak. Any information used or shared during the outbreak under these legal notices or the COPI Regulations will be limited to the period of the outbreak unless there is another legal basis for organisations to continue to use the information.

Data which is shared by NHS Digital will be subject to robust rules relating to privacy, security and confidentiality and only the minimum amount of data necessary to achieve the coronavirus purpose will be shared. Organisations using your data will also need to have a clear legal basis to do so and will enter into a data sharing agreement with NHS Digital. Information about the data that NHS Digital shares, including who with and for what purpose will be published in the NHS Digital data release register.

For more information about how NHS Digital will use your data please see the NHS Digital Transparency Notice for GP Data for Pandemic Planning and Research (COVID-19).

Your rights over your personal data

To read more about the health and care information NHS Digital collects, its legal basis for collecting this information and what choices and rights you have in relation to the processing by NHS Digital of your personal data, see:

the NHS Digital GPES Data for Pandemic Planning and Research (COVID-19) Transparency Notice

the NHS Digital Coronavirus (COVID-19) Response Transparency Notice

the NHS Digital General Transparency Notice

how NHS Digital looks after your health and care information

EVERYONE WORKING WITH OR FOR THE NHS HAS A LEGAL DUTY TO KEEP INFORMATION ABOUT YOU CONFIDENTIAL