Privacy Policy

Patient Data

Your medical records held by Queenscourt

This information briefly explains why QCH holds information about you, and how this information could be used. You can read all of the full details in our ‘fair processing notice’ documents below.

Fair Processing Notice Document 1
Fair Processing Notice Document 2

Your doctor and the team of health professionals caring for you keep records about your health and any treatment and care you receive. These records help make sure you receive the best possible care.

Electronic Health Records

Queenscourt uses electronic health records and holds very little information about you on paper. The benefits of electronic records are:

• Available to staff who need them to care for you – paper records can be physically lost and only be in one place at a time.
• Improvements in completeness and accuracy, with more consistent recording of information
• Can be shared between staff who are working together to provide your care.

Queenscourt Hospice wants to ensure that we can provide you with the best possible safe & effective care. During your treatment it is necessary to share your information with the health care professionals who are providing your treatment and care, and in some cases with other health care professionals from other organisations that are working with Queenscourt.

Queenscourt has a duty to keep health records up to date and accurate. If you feel anything in your record is factually incorrect, you have the right to apply to have it amended, as detailed in the Fair Processing Notice.

Everyone working for Queenscourt has a legal duty to keep information about you confidential, and there are safeguards in place to ensure your date is kept secure.

The information we keep falls into two categories:

• Demographic information
• Clinical information

What is demographic information?

• Your name (including the name you prefer to use)
• Your contact details (address/telephone/email)
• Details of the people involved in your care
• Carer’s details and next of kin
• Personal details (date of birth/gender/ethnic origin/religion or belief)
• Your NHS number
• Your GP practice

What is Clinical Information?

• Care provided by Queenscourt – details of your care plan and assessments
• Your medication and allergies
• Diagnosis and health conditions
• Your records may include other information you have told the clinician (eg about your family or work) but only if this is relevant to your care

How might we use your information?

The people caring for you use your information to provide treatment, check the quality of your care and help to make good decisions about your health. Only with your permission would we keep your relatives, carer and friends up to date with the progress of your treatment.

We also sometimes use your information more generally to:

• Check the quality of care we provide everyone eg. clinical audit
• Plan and manage the services we provide
• Carry out research
• Train health care professionals
• Inform and update the Care Quality Commission

In these instances we would normally remove your name and other identifiable data (ie anonymise). If the information needs to be in a form that identifies you, we would ask for your consent first.

When might we need to use identifiable information without asking your permission?
In very limited circumstances, the law requires your information to be used without asking for your permission in order to improve public health. We may (by law) be required to give out your information without asking permission, in these circumstances we will only provide the information needed. Wherever possible we will tell you.

For example we may need to:

• Report food poisoning cases to authorities
• Report some infectious diseases
• Inform an Independent Mental Capacity Advocate in order to provide help where the patient is unable to consent due to lack of capacity
• Provide information to used in court
• Give help to the police to help detect or prevent a serious crime

What if you do not want your information to be shared?

Inform the health care professional or consultant you are seeing and make it clear that you do want your information to be shared. We will not disclose your information to third parties without your permission, unless there are exceptional circumstances such as the health and safety of others is at risk or if the law requires it.

Your consultant or health care professional will discuss with you the implications and any risk of not sharing your information and how this may affect your care.

Access to Health Records

The Data Protection Act 2018 and the updated regulations as part of the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) safeguards the processing of your information. You are allowed by law to see what is contained in your health records under this Act.

Request for access to your health records should be in writing to Queenscourt’s Medical Director. This is called a Subject Access Request. When a request is sent to Queenscourt we must respond within 30 days. For more information on this and the forms to be completed click here.