As data controllers, GPs have fair processing responsibilities under the Data Protection Act and GDPR law 2018. This means ensuring that your personal confidential data (PCD) is handled in ways that are safe, transparent and what you would reasonably expect.

We need to hold personal information about you on our computer system and in paper records to help us to look after your health needs, and your doctor is responsible for their accuracy and safe keeping. Please help to keep your record up to date by informing us of any changes to your circumstances.

Doctors and staff in the practice have access to your medical records to enable them to do their jobs. From time to time information may be shared with others involved in your care if it is necessary. Anyone with access to your record is properly trained in confidentiality issues and is governed by both a legal and contractual duty to keep your details private.

All information about you is held securely and appropriate safeguards are in place to prevent accidental loss.

In some circumstances we may be required by law to release your details to statutory or other official bodies, for example if a court order is presented, or in the case of public health issues. In other circumstances you may be required to give written consent before information is released – such as for medical reports for insurance, solicitors etc.

To ensure your privacy, we will not disclose information over the telephone or fax unless we are sure that we are talking to you. Information will not be disclosed to family, friends, or spouses unless we have prior written consent, and we do not leave messages with others.

General Practice Data

The Acorn Surgery is one of many organisations working in the health and care system to improve care for patients and the public.

Whenever you use a health or care service, such as attending Accident & Emergency or using Community Care services, important information about you is collected in a patient record for that service. Collecting this information helps to ensure you get the best possible care and treatment. With your consent the information is shared between services to ensure a safe and effective service.

Patient Participation Group (PPG)

In line with the new GDPR regulations the PPG require consent to use your contact details to send you information advising you of PPG meeting dates, talks of interest dates and the Practice or PPG Newsletters.

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Related Documents

Click on the links below to read our privacy poster which summarises information on the GDPR and our Practice’s Privacy Notice to patients. Within the Privacy Notice, you will find our Subject Access Request Policy.

• Accessing Your Medical Records
• GDPR Privacy Notice
• Privacy Notice
• Privacy Poster
• Telephone Recording Policy

 

How to complain

We hope that most problems can be sorted out easily and quickly, often at the time they arise and directly with the person concerned. If your problem cannot be resolved in this way and you wish to make a complaint, we would like you to let us know as soon as possible – ideally within a matter of days or at most a few weeks – because this will enable us to establish what happened more easily. If it is not possible to do this, please let us have details of your complaint:

• Within 12 months of the incident that is the cause of the problem; or
• Within 12 months of discovering that you have a problem.

Complaining on behalf of someone else

Please note that we keep strictly to the rules of patient medical confidentiality. If you are complaining on behalf of someone else, we have to be assured that you have his or her permission to do so. A note signed by the patient concerned will be needed, unless they are incapable (because of illness) of providing this.

What you should do

Ask to speak to, email or make an appointment with the Practice Manager in order to discuss your concerns. She will explain the complaints procedure to you and make sure your concerns are taken seriously and dealt with promptly.

If you wish to put your complaint in writing, address to: Victoria Pilkington, Practice Manager, Acorn Surgery, The Oak Tree Centre, 1 Oak Drive, Huntingdon, PE29 7HN.

Alternatively email victoriapilkington@nhs.net or  telephone 01480 483100.

It will be a great help if you are as specific as possible about your complaint.

If you wish to make a complaint about the Community Matron or Social Prescribing services, which are provided by Huntingdon PCN, please click to view their dedicated complaints procedure

Our Commitment to You

We shall generally acknowledge your complaint within three working days and aim to have looked into your complaint within the time scale agreed with you but under normal circumstances within 21 working days.  The time taken to investigate your complaint will depend on its complexity and the number of people involved. We shall then be in a position to offer you an explanation, or a meeting if that is more appropriate.

When we look into your complaint, we aim to:

• Find out what happened and what should have happened.
• Make it possible for you to discuss the problem with those concerned if this is your wish.
• Ensure the complaint is resolved to your satisfaction.
• Make sure you receive an apology, where this is appropriate.
• Identify what needs to be done to ensure the problem does not arise again.

Our Principles Are:

• To get it right
• To be patient focussed
• To be open and accountable
• To act fairly and proportionately
• To put things right
• To listen and take issues seriously
• To seek continuous improvement

Complaining to NHS England

We hope that if you have a problem, you will use our Practice complaints procedure to ensure it is resolved. We believe this will give us the best chance of putting right whatever has gone wrong and an opportunity to improve our Practice.

This however does not affect your right to approach the contact the local integrated care board (ICB) direct if you feel you cannot raise your complaint with us.

In this instance you should contact: Patient Experience Team for free via 0800 279 2535, or by emailing cpicb.pet@nhs.net

The team works Monday to Friday, excluding bank holidays. If you call our freephone number and receive our answerphone message, please leave your name and telephone number so the team can return your call.

You can find out more about making a complaint on their website: https://www.cpics.org.uk/patient-experience-team

If you feel your complaint has not been resolved by the ICB or the Practice, it can be referred to The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman.  You may contact them instead of, or as well as, NHS England. All records will have to be provided to the Ombudsman to assist with the resolution of your complaint. www.ombudsman.org.uk 0345 015 4033 or phso.enquiries@ombudsman.org.uk or The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, Millbank Tower, Millbank, London, SW1P 4QP

FURTHER INFORMATION

For support and help regarding issues with NHS organisations, The Patient Experience Team (PET) provides:

• Advice and support to patients, their families and carers
• Information on NHS services
• Listens to concerns, suggestions or queries
• Help to sort out problems quickly.

In this instance you should contact: Patient Experience Team for free via 0800 279 2535, or by emailing cpicb.pet@nhs.net

The NHS Complaints Advocacy

For information and help in making a complaint you can contact POhWER who are the NHS Complaints advocacy service. www.pohwer.net Tel: 0300 456 2370, email: pohwer@powher.net, postal address: POhWER, NHS Complaints Advocacy, PO Box 14043, Birmingham B6 9BL.

Care Quality Commission

The Care Quality Commission (CQC), does not manage individual complaints about GPs and their services. However, you can find out more about making a complaint on their website: http://www.cqc.org.uk/contact-us

COMPLAINTS PROCEDURE

acornsurgery,
Oak Tree Centre,
Oak Drive,
Huntingdon,
PE29 7HN

TEL:  01480 483100

www.acornsurgery.com

If you have a complaint or concern about the service you have received from the doctors or any of the staff working in this Practice, please let us know. We operate a Practice complaints procedure as part of a NHS system for dealing with complaints. Our complaints system meets national criteria as laid down by the NHS.

Patient advice and liaison services (PALS)

The Patient Advice and Liaison Service, known as PALS, has been introduced to ensure that the NHS listens to patients, their relatives, carers and friends, and answers their questions and resolves their concerns as quickly as possible.

PALS also helps the NHS to improve services by listening to what matters to patients and their loved ones and making changes, when appropriate.

Addenbrooke’s
Hills Road
Cambridge
Cambridgeshire
CB2 0QQ
01223 216756
Email

CPFT – Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust
Elizabeth House
Fulbourn Hospital
Fulbourn
Cambridge
CB21 5EF
01223 219444
Email

Hinchingbrooke Hospital
Hinchingbrooke Park
Huntingdon
Cambridgeshire
PE29 6NT
01480 428964
Email

Peterborough City Hospital AND Stamford & Rutland Hospital
01733 673405
Email

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 we will notify the patient in writing of their removal from the list and record in the patient’s medical records the fact of the removal and the circumstances leading to it.

Accessing your GP-held records via the NHS app or NHS website

As your GP practice, we have been asked to provide you with, no later than 31 October 2023, access to your full medical record going forward via the NHS app (and NHS website) if you have a suitable NHS login

Your GP medical record contains consultation notes based on conversations between you, your GP and their team: medicines prescribed to you; all test results including hospital investigations; allergies; vaccines; and your medical conditions along with documents that may have been sent from local hospitals, clinics or other agencies, eg the police. There is likely to be sensitive and personal information within your medical record.

We are supportive of providing you with access to your record, but we wish to do this safely, make you aware that this is happening and offer you the choice to opt in or out. You may wish to speak with us first to understand what it is that you will see, and the risks which may be involved in having such confidential data either on your smartphone with the NHS app installed or online if other people might have access to that information through your devices. If you are in a difficult or pressured relationship for example, you may prefer your records to remain accessible only to those treating you, with them not appearing on your smartphone or online. Government has been clear that if a patient does not wish to have access, then we do not have to provide it. This is one reason why we have it switched off for the time being.

For those who would like access, we are happy to explain the different levels you might like. Everyone can have access to their medication history and allergies, for example, and will be able to order their repeat prescriptions. It’s also possible to request access to what we call your ‘coded record’ where you can see a list of medical problems and results. You can also request access to the ‘full’ record where you will be able to see everything, including the notes which have been written by doctors, nurses and others involved in your care, at the GP surgery, and elsewhere.

It’s important to remember that these documents may, at times, contain information that could be upsetting, especially if they contain news of a serious condition. It can also be a cause for worry seeing results online when it isn’t clear what the results might mean, and no one is available to ask, as can be the case during the evening or at weekends, for example.

Sometimes people with a mental health condition might prefer not to see documents that remind them of difficult times in their life. Letters from mental health teams sometimes go into detail about past events, and great care would be needed in deciding whether you would want to see these letters. It is possible for individual items to be hidden at your request and we would be happy to talk about any concerns you may have.

Great care is also needed in case private details might cause harm at home, should people in a difficult or pressured relationship be forced to show their medical record to an abusive partner. Anyone in such a position should make this clear to us at the practice, so we can take steps to keep you safe. This might mean removing access through the NHS app for the time being, or through a careful process where we hide sensitive things. We would talk this through with you.

Requesting access – what do I need to do?

The easiest way to get access is to create an NHS login through the NHS app on your smart phone. Although you can also access your GP records through the internet on a computer via https://www.nhsapp.service.nhs.uk/login

If you use the NHS app, you’ll have to set up an account using a unique e-mail address and then ‘authenticate’ yourself to the NHS system to prove you are who you say you are. This will involve confirming your name, date of birth and contact details. The NHS login has several levels of authentication and to gain access to your records you’ll need the highest level of authentication. This generally involves you recording a short video of yourself to prove you are a real person as well as uploading a copy of a suitable identification document. We can bypass this step issuing a third party authorisation if you are struggling, but you will need to have already signed up for online services via our website.

Once you have suitably authenticated yourself to the NHS app and created your NHS login you can approach your practice and ask for access, being mindful of the risks associated with access and the importance of not sharing passwords or having them stored in your smartphone if you think other people might want to see them without your permission. If you have any concerns, please let us know before requesting access.

There is an online form for you to complete, with your NHS login (this will be the email address you used to sign up). The purpose of the form is to specify your level of access and to ensure your understanding and agreement of your responsibilities and the risks associated with online access. It may be that the practice wishes to contact you to discuss your request if there are any concerns raised so that access can be given safely. We’re not sure how many people will ask for access all at once so there may be a wait, but we will do our best to get you online access as soon as we can.

To request online access please complete the request form via the link below

https://acornsurgery.com/practice-information/new-patients/online-services-registration/

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Subject Access Request (SAR)

Please find further information on accessing your medical records through a SAR here.

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Access to Prospective (Future) Medical information

People over 16 can now see new information added to their health record. This includes notes from appointments, test results, and letters. You can view this via the NHS App, NHS website, or another GP online app you use. If you don’t want to see your record, speak to your GP.

Information about the General Practioners and the practice required for disclosure under this act can be made available to the public. All requests for such information should be made to the practice manager.

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.