Your Personal Information

 

To give you the care you need, we keep information about your visits confidential to the surgery staff involved in your care or treatement. We keep information about your health and lifestyle and any illness, tests, prescriptions and other treatment that you have had. When this information contains things that can identify you, such as your name, address, postcode or date of birth, it's called your personal information. Your personal health information is stored securely within our practice on paper and on computer.

We sometimes share your personal health information with other organisations involved in your healthcare. We only share relevant information. For example, when your GP refers you to a specialist at the hospital, we send relevant details about you in the referral letter and receive information back from them about you. We sometimes share information including your name, address and date of birth so that you can be invited back for health screening.

We also need to use your personal information for administrative tasks, but we only use relevant information. So that we can be paid for services we give to you, we share information about the relevant NHS organisations in Scotland. These organisations help to check that public money is being spent properly. The surgery must allow these checks to be done and we need to share your information to be able to give you healthcare services. Sometimes, we might use information about you and other patients to help improve our services to check that our performance meets the required standard. Whenever we do this, we will make sure that as far as possible we don't disclose any information that could identify you.

The surgery is sometimes involved in health research and in teaching student nurses, doctors and NHS staff. We will not use or share your personal health information for research or training unless you have given permission.

Where you need a service that we give jointly with your local authority, we will ask your permission before giving them your information.