The practice complies with Data Protection and Access to Medical Records legislation. Identifiable information about you may be made available 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.
Use of Personal Health Information
It may be necessary to disclose your personal Health information for the following purposes:
For care and treatment
- Routine record keeping, consultation of records etc, in the course of the provision of care and treatment.
- Processing of records in the event of a medical emergency;
- Disclosure made by one health professional or organisation to another, eg where a GP refers a patient to a specialist
- Clinical audit eg the monitoring of a patient care pathway against existing standards and benchmarks.
For administration
- Processing for administrative purposes, eg disclosure by GP made in order to receive payment for treatment provided and post payment verification of payments.
- Administrative audit, which may include studies designed to improve the efficiency of the NHS as an organisation
For research
- Statutory disclosures to disease registries and for epidemiological research;
- Non statutory disclosures to disease registries and for epidemiological research
- Clinical trials
Legal and National Requirements
Staff are sometimes required by law to obtain or pass on information, for example to notify a birth or death or report certain infectious diseases for public health reasons or report information in relation to the Mental Health Act.
The Scottish Executive Health Department also requires information from the NHS to help monitor health services and plan for the future.
Staff may send basic personal details of all patients being cared for, along with information about their hospital or clinic attendance, to the NHS Information and Statistics Division, Scottish Centre for Infection and environmental Health, National Services Division and Practitioner Services Division.