All patient information is considered to be confidential and we comply fully with the Data Protection Act. All employees have access to this information in relation to their role and have signed a confidentiality agreement. Information may be shared, in confidence, with other NHS organisations in the interests of patient care.
Confidential patient data will be shared within the healthcare team at the Practices and with other healthcare professionals to whom a patient is referred.
Those individuals have a professional and contractual duty of confidentiality.
Confidential and identifiable information relating to patients will not be disclosed to other individuals without their explicit consent, unless it is a matter of life and death or there is a serious risk to the health and safety of the patients or it is overwhelmingly in the public interest to do so.
In these circumstances the minimum identifiable information that is essential to serve a legal purpose may be revealed to another individual who has a legal requirement to access the data for the given purpose.
That individual will also have professional and/or contractual duty of confidentiality. Data will otherwise be anonymised if possible before disclosure if this would serve the purpose for which data is required.