We provide a confidential service to all our patients, including under 16s. This means that you can tell others about a visit to the surgery, but we won't.

You can be sure that anything you discuss with any member of this practice– family doctor, nurse or receptionist – will stay confidential.

Even if you are under 16 nothing will be said to anyone – including parents, other family members, care workers or tutors – without your permission. The only reason why we might have to consider passing on confidential information without your permission, would be to protect you or someone else from serious harm. We would always try to discuss this with you first.

If you are being treated elsewhere – for example at a hospital or clinic – it is best if you allow the doctor or nurse to inform the practice of any treatment you are receiving.

Confidential patient data will be shared within the health care team at the practice, including nursing staff, admin staff, secretaries and receptionists, and with other health care 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 (including NHS or PCT management staff) 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 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 a professional and contractual duty of confidentiality. Data will otherwise be anonymised if possible before disclosure if this would serve the purpose for which the data is required.

We are sometimes asked to provide information for the purposes of education, audit or research or for the purposes of health care administration. In all cases the person to whom such information is released is bound by a duty of confidentiality. The information disclosed is kept to the minimum necessary for the purpose and is always anonymised if at all possible.

You have the right to object to ways in which your data is used (or processed). We will always try to respect your wishes if you do not wish for your data to be used in a particular way, unless to do would mean that we could not provide you with safe and effective medical care.

You have the right of access to your own health record. The Data Protection Act 1998, which came into force on 1st March 2000, allows you to find out what information about you is held on our server and in your manual records.

Download our factsheet on viewing your health record.

If you wish to view your record then you should make a written request to the Oaklands Practice. You are also entitled to receive a copy of your record in a permanent form but you should note that a charge will usually be made for this. You should also be aware that in certain circumstances your right to see some details in your health records may be limited in your own interest or for other reasons. You also have the right to have information explained to you where necessary (e.g. medical abbreviations).

EMIS is the name of our medical software supplier. They manage our system and our server, which holds the medical records of our patients, and ensure that we are able to provide effective and safe medical services to our patients at all times. EMIS can access our server remotely for the purpose of maintaining and troubleshooting the medical software. They never access individual records without our permission and then only to investigate why problems or errors are occurring in that patient's records. We also send backups of our system to EMIS for binary data validation and transfer to DVD. They do not access individual patient records during this. We have absolute trust and confidence in EMIS and they have an absolute and contractual duty of confidentiality when they are required, on occasions, to access patient records.

All our medical records are held on our surgery server. We do not hold any medical records on, or backup to, an off site server of any kind, otherwise known as a hosted server.

We do not hold any medical records on laptops, USB sticks or other portable devices.

The Oaklands Practice is NOT part of the first–wave of pilot practices uploading information to the Spine to form the Summary Care Record.

The Oaklands Practice is NOT submitting any medical records to the Hampshire Common Health Record project, and will never do so as long as explicit consent is not being sought for such uploads.

The Oaklands Practice does NOT send any information to a Referral Management Centre or Referral Information Service.

If you have any worries about confidentiality, please feel free to ask a member of staff, or alternatively contact the Caldicott Guardian for the Oaklands Practice, Dr Neil Bhatia.

Useful and informative links about GPs and confidentiality:

• The Data Protection Act 1998
• The Human Rights Act 1998
• Confidentiality: Protecting and Providing Information (GMC Guidance)
• Use and Disclosure of Health Data (ICO Guidance)
• Article 8 Human Rights Act and Confidential Information: Liberty Guide
• Confidentiality and Disclosure of Health Information (BMA Guidance)
• MDU Guide to Confidentiality (introduction)
• Good practice guidelines for general practice electronic patient records
• Confidentiality : NHS Code of Practice
• Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data.
• Article 29 Data Protection Working Party Working Document on the processing of personal data relating to health in electronic health records (EHR).
• BMA Guidance on disclosure of information to PCTs
• BMA Guidance on secondary uses of patient information