Practice Policies & Patient Information

Access to Records

In accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998 and Access to Health Records Act, patients may request to see their medical records. Such requests should be submitted via a signed request by the patient, for the attention of the Practice Secretaries. These requests may be subject to an administration charge. No information will be released without patient consent unless we are legally obliged to do so.

For information on how to access your digital health record, visit: NHS – View your GP health record

Complaints

Practice Complaints Procedure
Patient feedback is important to us as it helps us to improve the service we provide to patients. We take patient complaints seriously and will address any concerns by carrying out a thorough investigation into the matter.

How do I make a complaint?
If you wish to complain please contact Catherine Eyre, Reception Manager on 0115 883 2626, who will deal with your concerns appropriately. If you wish to submit a written complaint, our complaints procedure, including a complaints form can be viewed by clicking here. Please note; completed patient complaint forms should be returned to the Practice directly for investigation.

Alternatively, you may send a written letter to:
F.A.O. The Operations Manager
Castle Healthcare Practice,
Embankment Primary Care Centre,
50-60 Wilford Lane,
West Bridgford,
Nottingham,
NG2 7SD

If you are complaining on behalf of someone else, the Practice needs to know that you have their permission to do so.

What Happens Next?
The complaint will be acknowledged within 5 working days. The Practice will respond, after investigation, within the timeframe specified to you at the acknowledgement stage of the process. Some complaints may take longer to address but you will be informed of a response time. If this cannot be met, the Practice will keep you informed.

Please be assured making a complaint will not adversely affect your ongoing healthcare at the Practice. We will deal with you fairly, compassionately and will endeavour to resolve the situation to a satisfactory conclusion.

Wherever possible, we aim to learn from complaints and take action to avoid similar occurrences.

How do I complain to someone Independent?
GP Practices would prefer to have the opportunity to answer complaints ourselves in the first instance. However, you may pass your complaint directly to:

Patient Experience Team
Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Integrated Care Board
Civic Centre,
Arnot Hill Park,
Nottingham Road,
Arnold,
Nottingham,
NG5 6LU

Tel: 0115 8839570
Email: [email protected]

If you would like further information please follow the link to the ICB website: Patient Experience and Complaints – NHS Nottingham and Nottinghamshire ICB

However, please note, patients cannot raise the same complaint with the Practice and ICB.

Is there a time limit?
A complaint must be made within 6 months of the date of the incident that caused the problem or the date of discovering the problem.

Please remember, the sooner you provide the Practice with the information, the easier it will be to investigate the facts.

If you are not satisfied with the outcome?
You can contact the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) on 0345 015 4033.

For more information see their website www.ombudsman.org.uk

Other useful contacts
POhWER, NHS Complaints Advocacy, on 0300 456 2370. For more information see their website www.pohwer.net

For more information, visit: NHS – How to complain to the NHS

Confidentiality & Medical Records

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.

Data Protection Privacy Notice for Patients

Did Not Attend Policy

Due to an increase in the number of wasted appointments through patients non-attendance, it has become necessary to implement the following policy:

If you repeatedly fail to attend appointments over a 12 month period you may be removed from this practice list and required to register at a different General Practice.

If you cannot attend your appointments for any reason please let us know as soon as possible, giving at least 24 hours notice. We can then offer the appointment to someone else.

DocMail Policy

Castle Healthcare Practice uses a data processing company called DocMail to handle some mailings to patients. Typically this is for bulk mailings such as the invitations to attend the flu clinics where it is difficult to accommodate the administrative work involved without affecting our ability to serve patients. This is permissible under guidance from both the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and the Department of Health (DoH) subject to the provisions of the Data Protection Act

Please find below some more information about DocMail and how we work with them to ensure that we protect our patients’ personal data at all times.

What is DocMail

DocMail is provided by CFH Total Document management Ltd a secure print and mailing company who provide print and mailing services for Local Government, GPs, Dentists, Medical practices, Schools, Exam Boards and Banks etc. throughout the UK.

The system can be found online at http://www.docmail.co.uk/ and requires a secure user name and password for us to log on and upload our letters and address lists to create the printed output for despatch to Royal Mail. The system allows us to upload a letter template and mailing data for the patients we want to write to via a secure web portal.

The Data Protection Act (DPA) (1998)

Castle Healthcare Practice and DocMail are both fully compliant with the Data Protection Act.

The Information Commissioners Office issued guidance in February 2012 for organisations that outsource some of its data processing to a third party. The Data Protection Act allows outsourcing to take place but stipulates certain conditions that must be met for it to be compliant.

An organisation that processes personal data is required to handle personal data in accordance with the data protection principles. A data controller may choose to use another organisation to process personal data on its behalf – a data processor.

The data controller remains responsible for ensuring its processing complies with the DPA, whether it processes in-house or engages a data processor.

Where a data processor is used the data controller must ensure that suitable security arrangements are in place in order to comply with the seventh data protection principle.

Further extracts from the guidance are reproduced below and the entire document is available on the ICO website.

Castle Healthcare Practice has strictly adhered to this guidance in setting up the partnership with DocMail.

Castle Healthcare Practice remains the data controller and as such has the responsibility for ensuring compliance with the provisions of the Act. We are not able to pass on those responsibilities to DocMail whose role is that of a data processor.
There is a written contract between Castle Healthcare Practice and CFH – Total Document management Ltd in addition to the standard terms of business that are published on the DocMail website.
That contract stipulates that DocMail can only act in accordance with instructions from Castle Healthcare Practice i.e. they can only print and mail letters in accordance with data provided by us. They are not able to do anything else with that data.
The contract also creates a legal requirement for DocMail to act in accordance with the seventh principle of the Data Protection Act.
The Partners of Castle Healthcare Practice have satisfied themselves that DocMail have provided sufficient guarantees in respect of the technical and organisational security measures governing the processing to be carried out.
The partners have taken, and will continue to take, reasonable steps to ensure that DocMail are compliant with these security measures.
No data will pass outside of the European Union

Other Approvals

DocMail is also approved by the following:

Government Procurement Service for Hybrid Mail – which allows all government organisations to use DocMail.
Health Trust EuropeOutgoing Mail Solutions – which includes University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS trust who visited our premises last week to carry out a site audit.
67 Primary Care Trusts for Medical Studies have approved the use of DocMail. 500,000 medical studies packs were sent in 2011 across 200 surgeries
Caldicott Guardian across a number areas have approved the use of DocMail when asked
Ethics Committees have approved the use of DocMail by surgeries for use in medical studies

Accreditations & Security Policies

In addition to the credentials listed above, we have been supplied with DocMail’s Corporate Policies and certifications as detailed below:

ISO 27001:2005 Information Security management System Certificate
CFH Site Security Policy
CFH Information Technology Security Policy
Information Security Policy

We have permission from DocMail to allow any patient of Castle Healthcare Practice to view them on request. Please ask at reception if you wish to do this.

Process

The data file provided to DocMail will only contain enough data to enable them to fulfil the contract. This means that it will include name and address details and, where appropriate, the date and time of an appointment as well as the name of the clinician you will be seeing or the name of a clinic you will be attending eg Flu Clinic or NHS Health Check. We will of course exercise the same discretion in writing the letters as we would if we were printing and posting them at the surgery.

The letters will be delivered to your address by Royal Mail in the normal way. The letters will carry the DocMail logo and the return address on the reverse side. This address does not identify the letter as having come from a doctor’s surgery.

DocMail delete the personal data 28 days after the mailing.

If you have any questions or require further information about this please ask to speak to the Operations Manager.

Freedom of Information

GP Earnings

2021/2022 Publication of GP Net Earnings

All GP Practices are required to declare the mean earnings for GPs working to deliver NHS services to patients at each Practice.

The mean pay for GPs working in Castle Healthcare Practice in the last financial year was £67,963.72 before Tax and National Insurance. This is based on 14 GPs, of which 2 are full time and 12 were part time and nil locums GP’s worked in the Practice for more than a 6 month period.

It should be noted that the prescribed method for calculating earnings is potentially misleading, because it does not take into account of time each GP spends working in the practice over the year. This information should not be used to form any judgement about GP earnings or to make any comparison with any other Practice.

Green Impact

Castle Healthcare Practice is delighted to have signed up to the Green Impact for Health Toolkit and we are actively taking steps to reduce our carbon footprint.

The climate emergency is also a health emergency, and health care in the UK contributes 5.4% of the UK’s carbon emissions. We need to enhance the health of future generations, and this means operating within the sustainable boundaries of the planet.

Fortunately, most of the solutions for the planet also make our health better, for example; eating a mainly plant-based diet, engaging in active travel and exercise in nature, avoiding smoking and reducing pollution etc. This will enhance our health and reduce our need for medications, with further benefits to the NHS, your health and the carbon footprint of healthcare.

For further information, visit: www.greenerpractice.co.uk

Rushcliffe Big Green Book

The Rushcliffe Big Green Book is a directory of nature-based activities and opportunities around Rushcliffe and is in line with the national Green Social Prescribing initiative.

Green Social Prescribing is a way of connecting people to nature-based activities, green groups, projects and schemes in their local community for support with health and wellbeing.

For more information, visit: The Rushcliffe Big Green Book

Notts Care Record

All health and care providers across Nottinghamshire hold individual paper and electronic records about you. This may mean that your information may not be available when and where you need it to be, and you may end up repeating yourself when treated by different services.

The Notts Care Record is a secure and confidential system that will enable the viewing of information about your health and care so that information is available to the right health and care staff at the right time to support the delivery of your care. Having a more joined up and coordinated record will improve the way information about you is shared in order to deliver better care and make decisions more effectively.

The Notts Care Record is a collaboration between GP, hospital, community, mental health and social care services across Nottingham and Nottinghamshire.

For more information, visit: Digital Notts – Shared Care Records

Practice Policy

Summary Care Record

Your Summary Care Record (SCR) is a short summary of your GP medical records. It tells other health and care staff who care for you about the medicines you take and your allergies.

For more information, visit: NHS Digital – SCR – Information For Patients

Why do I need a Summary Care Record?

The information held in your Summary Care Record gives health and care professionals, away from your usual GP practice, access to information to provide you with safer care, reduce the risk of prescribing errors and improve your patient experience.

Your Summary Care Record contains basic information about allergies and medications and any reactions that you have had to medication in the past.

Who can see it?

Only healthcare staff involved in your care can see your Summary Care Record.

All patients registered with a GP have a Summary Care Record, unless they have chosen not to have one.

Do I have to have one?

No, it is not compulsory. If you choose to opt out of the scheme, then you will need to complete a form and bring it to the Practice. The form can be found at: Summary Care Record Opt Out Form

More Information

For further information, visit: NHS – Your Health Records.

Supplementary Privacy Notice for Summary Care Records – Covid-19: NHS Digital – SCR – Supplementary Transparency Notice

Travelling Outside The UK

If you need prescribed medicine for your health condition, talk to your GP or Practice Nurse about your travel plans at least 6 weeks before your departure date. They can tell you if you need to make any special arrangements.

An NHS patient planning to travel abroad may receive an FP10 from their surgery to cover their time abroad. This is at the discretion of the surgery but must be for no longer than three months. This should give the patient enough medication to last until they can make arrangements for alternative supply in the country they are visiting. New NHS prescriptions will not be issued until the patient has returned to the UK.

NHS prescriptions must never be obtained by relatives or friends on behalf of patients who are currently abroad, irrespective of such factors as owning a house in the UK or paying UK taxes.

Patients are responsible for ensuring that any drugs they take into a country conform to local laws.

For more information, visit:

Violence & Aggression Policy

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 the patient will be notified in writing of their removal from the list and a record will be made in the patient’s medical records stating the details of the removal and the circumstances leading to it.

Waste

Your Data Matters to the NHS

Information about your health and care helps us to improve your individual care, speed up diagnosis, plan your local services and research new treatments. The NHS is committed to keeping patient information safe and always being clear about how it is used.

How your data is used

Information about your individual care such as treatment and diagnoses is collected about you whenever you use health and care services. It is also used to help us and other organisations for research and planning such as research into new treatments, deciding where to put GP clinics and planning for the number of doctors and nurses in your local hospital. It is only used in this way when there is a clear legal basis to use the information to help improve health and care for you, your family and future generations.

Wherever possible we try to use data that does not identify you, but sometimes it is necessary to use your confidential patient information.

You have a choice

You do not need to do anything if you are happy about how your information is used. If you do not want your confidential patient information to be used for research and planning, you can choose to opt out securely online or through a telephone service. You can change your mind about your choice at any time.

Will choosing this opt-out affect your care and treatment?

No, choosing to opt out will not affect how information is used to support your care and treatment. You will still be invited for screening services, such as screenings for bowel cancer.

What do you need to do?

If you are happy for your confidential patient information to be used for research and planning, you do not need to do anything.

To find out more about the benefits of data sharing, how data is protected, or to make/change your opt-out choice visit www.nhs.uk/your-nhs-data-matters