The Data Protection Act 2018, gives every living person (or their authorised representative) the right to apply for access to their health records, irrespective of when they were compiled.

Definitions

Within the Data Protection Act 2018, a health record is defined as ‘a record consisting of information about the physical or mental health, or condition, of an identifiable individual, made by, or on behalf of, a health professional, in connection with the care of that individual.

A health record can be in computerised and/or manual form. It may include such documentation as hand written clinical notes, letters to and from other health professionals, laboratory reports, radiographs and other imaging records, printouts, photographs, videos and tape recordings.

Personal information relating to an individual includes factual information, expressions of opinion, and the intentions of the health professional in relation to the individual concerned.

You are able to view your medical records on line; this can either just the ‘coded’ entries or ‘full’ access. If you wish to use this facility please contact the surgery via your online account or in writing and we can facilitate this for you.

Requests for Access to Records made by a Patient Representative

A patient can authorise a representative to access their health records on their behalf. This must be done in writing, with confirmation of the representative’s identity and relationship to the patient.

Representatives able to provide evidence that they are acting under power of attorney will be granted access to the health records of the patient.

Where a patient who is physically or mentally disabled and unable to provide written consent for a representative to seek access on their behalf, the surgery will give the patient as much assistance as possible, in order to ascertain whether consent has been granted by other means.

Parental Responsibility

Parents, or those with parental responsibility, will generally have the right to apply for access to a child’s health record.

The website aims to reach AA standard in line with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.0.

Although efforts to cover as wide a range of issues are made, we understand that we are not able to address the needs of people with all types, degrees, and combinations of disability.

We hope that you’re enjoying using this website and are not experiencing any problems. However, if you do have difficulty viewing the site, there are some things you can do to make it easier. You can change the settings of your browser to better suit your needs.

NHS Choices, the national NHS Website have worked in partnership with AbilityNet, a national charity that helps disabled adults and children to use computers and the internet. Their help with accessibility guide provides comprehensive, step-by-step instructions on how to adjust your computer and browser according to your needs, such as for sight or hearing problems. This includes information such as how to make the text larger in different browsers, change your keyboard or mouse settings, or increase colour contrast.

Click Here to get more help with accessibility

All GP practices are required to declare the mean earnings for GPs working to deliver NHS Services to patients.

The average GP pay of our 54 Full time and 201 Part time GPs in Modality Partnership in the previous financial year was £66,200 before the deduction of employee’s superannuation contributions, tax and national insurance.

Confidentiality is central to trust between doctors and patients. Without assurances about confidentiality, patients may be reluctant to seek medical attention or to give doctors the information they need in order to provide good care.

Appropriate information sharing is essential to the efficient provision of safe, effective care, both for the individual patient and for the wider community of patients. Your medical records are held on our computer system. The Practice has a stringent security and confidentiality policy which fully complies with the Data Protection Act. Your details are only available to and used by those involved in your care. However this information may be used for research purposes but in such cases will be anonymised and encrypted.

All staff undertake annual training and assessment in the importance of maintaining patient confidentiality. You have the right to know what information we hold about you.

An example of our commitment to confidentiality is that we cannot divulge information about your appointments to anyone else (this includes telephone consultations). It may be that you share this information with family members but we cannot assume that is the case. Therefore if we contact you about an appointment or for a phone consultation we will not identify ourselves to anyone but you. This can at times appear excessive but is evidence that should there be occasions when you do not want anyone to know you have an appointment at the surgery you can be confident that we will not reveal that information.

There will be occasions when you will be asked to share your information with a 3rd party e.g. hospitals, clinics. This is so that the professional you are seeing has a good background knowledge of your health. When this relates to a referral, the service you are being referred to may refuse to process your referral if they do not have this access.

We take confidentiality very seriously. The Practice is registered with the Information Commissioners’ Office (ICO). We comply with the Data Protection Act (2018) and GDPR. All staff recognise the importance of this. We ask you for personal information so that you can receive appropriate care and treatment. This information is recorded electronically and/or via manual medical records. For the effective functioning of a multi-disciplinary team this requires that medical information about you is shared between members of this practice and, on occasion with other health care professionals. We will not release any information about you to other third parties unless we have your consent to do so.

Our Privacy Notice describes how we collect, use, and process your personal data, and how, in doing so, we comply with our legal obligations to you. You can view a copy of our Privacy Notice on our website or by visiting the surgery

Modality Partnership is committed to eliminating individual and institutional discrimination, harassment and victimisation across all protected characteristics set out in the Equality Act 2010 relating to patients and employees which are: Race, Sex, Disability, Sexual Orientation, Religion or Belief, Gender Reassignment, Age, Marriage and Civil Partnership and Pregnancy and Maternity.

​All Modality Partnership staff complete equality and diversity training.

We have allocated a Named Accountable GP (usual doctor) for all of our registered patients.

If you have a preference or want to know who your named GP is, you can contact us for more information.

Please view our ‘National Data Opt Out’ information Here

The NHS in England is for all of us and it’s useful to know your rights and responsibilities.

The NHS Constitution helps you to understand what to expect when using the NHS, including in relation to:

• Dignity and respect
• Good, safe care
• Feedback and complaints

You can find more information about the NHS Constitution and its handbook at:

• www.gov.uk/government/publications

Black Country Family Practice operates as part of a non-limited partnership, Modality Partnership.

You can find details of all of our partners here.

Patients have the right to:

• Be seen by a doctor/healthcare professional for diagnosis and treatment of their medical condition. This is facilitated by making appointments from the range offered by the practice.
• Participate in public health programmes such as vaccinations.
• Not to be unlawfully discriminated against in the provision of NHS services including on grounds of gender, race, religion or belief, sexual orientation,
• disability (including learning disability or mental illness or age.
• Be treated with dignity and respect, in accordance with their human rights
• Accept or refuse treatment that is offered, and not to be given any physical examination or treatment unless valid consent has been given.
• Privacy and confidentiality and to expect the practice to keep their confidential information safe and secure.
• Access to their own health records.
• Choose their GP practice, and to be accepted by that Practice unless there are reasonable grounds to refuse, in which case they will be informed of those reasons.
• Express a preference for consulting with a particular doctor within their GP Practice.
• Have any complaint they make about the services we provide dealt with efficiently, to have it properly investigated, know the outcome and escalate the complaint to the independent Health Service Ombudsman.

Patients have the responsibility to:

• inform the surgery if they are unable to keep their appointment, making an appointment available for another patient.
• treat staff and other patients or visitors at the practice with respect and accept that causing a nuisance or disturbance on the premises is not acceptable.

How your data is used for research and planning (OpenSAFELY)

To help improve NHS services and patient care, we allow some of your health information to be used for research and planning. This is done through a secure system called OpenSAFELY, which is run by NHS England. Only pseudonymised data (which means your name and other details that directly identify you are removed or replaced with codes) is used. Your full personal information never leaves our GP system, and the data is only used in highly secure environments by approved NHS researchers. This use of data is allowed by law because it supports important public health work and research that benefits everyone.

This is done under the legal basis of public interest tasks (UK GDPR Article 6(1)(e)) and for health research (Article 9(2)(j)). You can read more about OpenSAFELY at www.opensafely.org and if you’d prefer not to have your data used in this way, you can opt out at www.nhs.uk/your-nhs-data-matters.

Please note: For some projects run under NHS legal powers (like OpenSAFELY), your data may still be used in a protected, pseudonymised form, even if you choose to opt out. This is because the law allows certain types of data use where it’s in the public interest.

Read the ‘privacy and your data’ notice here.

Summary Care Record

We are committed to taking all reasonable precautions necessary to ensure the health, safety, welfare and well-being of our employees, patients and visitors.  We endeavour to ensure that all employees are protected from physical and verbal abuse while they are working and strongly support NHS guidelines regarding zero tolerance.  We operate a Zero Tolerance Policy for patients.

Anyone attending the surgery who is abusive, violent, aggressive be it verbally, physically or in any threatening manner whatsoever to members of staff or other persons present on the practice premises, will risk removal from the practice list.  In extreme cases we may summon the police to remove offenders from the practice premises.