Patient Confidentiality and Privacy Notice

GDPR brought in new legal protection for personal information from May 2018.

This tells you what personal information Teesside Chiropractic holds and why, and what your rights are.

Our details are: Mr Matthew Couldry & Mr Lewis Westwood, MSci Chiropractic

Tel: 07738 424274 - Matt

Tel: 07955 742654

The purpose of processing client data:

In order to give professional chiropractic care, we will need to gather and retain potentially sensitive information about your health. We will only use this information for the purposes of carrying out chiropractic care and making associated recommendations concerning your health and well-being.

If you contact us via our Facebook page, by text, or by email, we will take basic contact details and information to allow us to contact you and handle bookings. If you provide us with any sensitive or medical/health information at the enquiry or booking stage, we will only hold and use this information if we proceed to treatment; otherwise, it will be deleted.

Lawful basis for holding and using client information:

As registered members of the General Chiropractic Council (GCC), we abide by the GCC Code of Practice. The lawful basis under which we hold and use your information is legitimate interests. This means we need to retain your information to provide you with the best possible treatment options and advice. We hold special category data (i.e., health-related information) in order for us to fulfil our role as a primary health care practitioner bound under the GCC Code of Practice.

What information we hold and what we do with it:

In order to give chiropractic care, we will need to ask for and keep information about your health. We will only use this for informing chiropractic plans of care and any advice we give as a result of your treatment, and for contacting you about details of our services. The information to be held is:

• Your contact details.

• Medical history and other health-related information.

• Testing results

• Treatment details and related notes.

We will NOT share your information with anyone else (other than within our own practice, or as required for legal process) without explaining why it is necessary, and getting your explicit consent.

How long do we retain your information for:

In line with the GCC's code of practice, Chiropractors must maintain records about patients for eight years from a patient's last visit. If the patient is a child, records must be kept until their 25th birthday or 26th birthday if aged 17 at the end of treatment.

In case there has been cause for concern, records must be kept indefinitely.

Your data will not be transferred outside the EU without your consent.

Protecting your personal data:

We are committed to ensuring that your personal data is secure. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have put in place appropriate technical, physical and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect from you. We will contact you using the contact preferences you give me in relation to:

• Appointment times

• Chiropractic information or information related to your health.

Who else can see your information:

If we appoint additional staff to help manage the clinic's business flow, they will be assigned a scheduler role. The Scheduler role is designed to perform a minimal number of functions and can only access a select few areas of Cliniko. Schedulers can:

• Book, view, modify, cancel, or archive appointments.

• View basic patient details.

• Create new patients and modify existing ones.

• Unarchive patients.

• Send SMS messages to patients.

• View Contacts.

• See all messages and comments on the dashboard, and post/modify/archive their own messages and comments.

• View and modify their own user details.

• View the following reports: appointment schedule (daily and weekly), missed appointments, and recalls.

A scheduler will never be able to see any of your financial or confidential patient details, such as treatment notes.

Your rights:

GDPR gives you the following rights:

• The right to be informed: To know how your information will be held and used.

• The right of access: To see your practitioner’s records of your personal information, so you know what is held about you and can verify it.

• The right to rectification: To tell your practitioner to make changes to your personal information if it is incorrect or incomplete.

• The right to erasure (also called “the right to be forgotten”): For you to request your practitioner to erase any information they hold about you

• The right to restrict processing of personal data: You have the right to request limits on how your practitioner uses your personal information

• The right to data portability: Under certain circumstances, you can request a copy of personal information held electronically so you can reuse it in other systems.

• The right to object: To be able to tell your practitioner you don’t want them to use certain parts of your information, or only to use it for specific purposes.

• Rights in relation to automated decision-making and profiling.

• The right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office: To be able to complain to the ICO if you feel your details are not correct, if they are not being used in a way that you have permitted, or if they are being stored when they don’t have to be. Full details of your rights can be found at https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/individual-rights/.

If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please use the contact details given above. If you are dissatisfied with the response, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office; their contact details are at: www.ico.org.uk

Practitioner’s rights:

• If you don’t agree to us keeping records of information about you and your treatments, or if you don’t allow us to use the information in the way we need to for treatments, we may not be able to treat you.

• We have to keep your records of treatment for a specific period as described above, which may mean that even if you ask us to erase any details about you, we might have to keep these details until after that period has passed.

• We can move records between different computers and IT systems, as long as your details are protected from being seen by others without your permission. If you have any questions or concerns about this Privacy Notice or how we hold your personal information, please let us know using the contact details above.