Privacy Notice
 
In providing your care and treatment, we will ask for information about you and your health. Occasionally, we may receive information from other providers who have been involved in providing your care. This privacy notice describes the type of personal information we hold, why we hold it and what we do with it.

Information that we hold    
We can only keep and use information for specific reasons set out in the law. If we want to keep and use information about your health, we can only do so in particular circumstances. Below, we describe the information we hold and why, and the lawful basis for collecting and using it.

Contact details
We hold personal information about you including your name, date of birth, address, telephone number and email address. This information allows us to fulfill our contract with you to provide appointments. We will also use the information to send you reminders, follow up the healing process as well as obtain feedback about our service as we have a legitimate interest to ensure your continuing care and to improving our services. 

Clinical records
We hold information about your general health as well as your procedure, including
 
-Clinical records about your care and treatment
-Clinical photographs
-Medical histories
-Consent forms
-Treatment plans
-Notes of conversations with you about your care
-Dates of your appointments
-Details of any complaints you have made and how these complaints were dealt with
-Correspondence with you and other health professionals or institutions.
 
We collect and use this information to allow us to fulfill our contract with you to discuss your treatment and provide care that meets your needs. We also use this information for the legitimate interest of ensuring the quality of the treatment we provide. 

Financial information
We hold information about the fees we have charged, the amounts you have paid and some payment details. This information forms part of our contractual obligation to you to provide care and allows us to meet legal financial requirements.

Website visitors information
When someone visits our website, we use a third party service, to collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. 
 
How we use your information
To provide you with the care and treatment that you need, we require up-to-date and accurate information about you.
 
We will use your contact details to send you appointment confirmation texts/ emails.
 
We will use your contact details to remind you of your appointment either by phone, text message or email.
 
We may need to contact you to reschedule or cancel your appointment.
 
We will contact you usually a few weeks after your procedure to ensure a smooth healing process and whether you need any follow up appointments.
 
We may contact you to conduct patient surveys or to find out if you are happy with the treatment you received for quality control purposes.
 
We have CCTV at the practice for the purposes of patient and staff safety.

We use the website information to find out things such as the number of visitors to the various parts of the site and the user's behaviour in browsing our website.. This information is only processed in a way which does not identify anyone. The information helps us to continually develop our website.

Sharing information
Your information is normally used only by those working at the practice but there may be instances where we need to share it – for example, with:
 

• Your doctor

• The hospital or other health professionals caring for you

• Specialist medical services to which we may refer you

• Debt collection agencies

 
We will only disclose your information on a need-to-know basis and will limit any information that we share to the minimum necessary. We will let you know in advance if we send your medical information to another medical provider and we will give you the details of that provider at that time.
 
In certain circumstances or if required by law, we may need to disclose your information to a third party not connected with your health care, including HMRC or other law enforcement or government agencies.

Keeping your information safe
We store your personal information securely on our practice computer system and in a manual filing system. Your information cannot be accessed by those who do not work at the practice; only those working at the practice have access to your information. They understand their legal responsibility to maintain confidentiality and follow practice procedures to ensure this.
 
We take precautions to ensure security of the practice premises, the practice filing systems and computers.
 
We keep your records for 10 years after the date of your last visit to the practice or until you reach the age of 25 years, whichever is the longer. At your request, we will delete non-essential information (for example some contact details) before the end of this period.

Access to your information and other rights
You have a right to access the information that we hold about you and to receive a copy. We do not usually charge you for copies of your information; if we pass on a charge, we will explain the reasons.
 
You can also request us to
 

• Correct any information that you believe is inaccurate or incomplete. If we have disclosed that information to a third party, we will let them know about the change.

• Erase some of the information we hold. For legal reasons, we may be unable to erase certain information (for example, information about your treatment). However, we can, if you ask us to, delete some contact details and other non-clinical information.

• Stop using your information – for example, sending you reminders for appointments or information about our service.

• Stop using information if you believe the information is inaccurate or you believe we are using your information illegally.

 
If we are relying on your consent to use your personal information for a particular purpose, you may withdraw your consent at any time and we will stop using your information for that purpose.
 
All requests should be made in writing to our practice manager.

If you do not agree
If you do not wish us to use your personal information as described, you should discuss the matter with your clinician. If you object to the way that we collect and use your information, we may not be able to continue to provide your care.