Privacy

Privacy Notice

The practice aims to meet the requirements of the Data Protection Act 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the guidelines on the Information Commissioner’s website as well as our professional guidelines and requirements.

The data controller, Data protection officer and Information Governance lead is Dr Paul Cassar.

This Privacy Notice is available on the practice website at www.grange-dental.co.uk, www.thedentalhygienecentre.co.uk, at reception, by email if you contact enquiries@grange-dental.co.uk or by calling 01243 784688  

You will be asked to provide personal information when joining the practice. The purpose of processing your personal data is to provide you with optimum dental health care and prevention.

The categories and examples of data we process are:

- Personal data for the provision of dental health care
- Personal data for the purposes of providing treatment plans, recall appointments, reminders or estimates
- Personal data such as details of family members for the provision of health care to children or for emergency contact details
- Personal data for the purposes of employed and self-employed team members employment and engagement respectively
- Personal data for the purposes of direct mail, email and text reminders to inform you of you dental appointments only
- Personal data - IP addresses so that we can understand our patients better and inform our marketing approach as well as improve the web site
- Special category data including health records for the purposes of the delivery of health care and meeting our legal obligations
- Special category data including health records
- Special category data to meet the requirements of the Equality Act 2010
- Special category data details of criminal record checks for employees and contracted team members

We minimise the data that we keep, and do not keep it for longer than necessary.

We never pass your personal details to a third party unless we have a contract for them to process data on our behalf and will otherwise keep it confidential. If we intend to refer a patient to another practitioner or to secondary care such as a hospital we will gain the individual’s permission before the referral is made and the personal data is shared. Your data will be shared with the NHS in England.

- Personal data is stored in the EU whether in digital or hard copy format

- Personal data is obtained when a patient joins the practice or when a patient is referred to the practice only

For full details or where your data is stored, please ask to see Information Governance Procedures 
(M 217C).

We have established the following lawful bases for processing your data:

Our lawful bases for processing personal data:

- The legitimate interests of the dental practice
- To comply with our legal obligations

Our lawful bases for processing special category data:

- Processing is necessary for health care purposes
- We obtain consent of the data subject to process criminal record checks

The reasons we process the data include:

- To maintain your contemporaneous clinical records
- To provide you with dental treatment, prevention and oral health advice
- To carry out financial transactions with you
- To manage your NHS dental care treatment
- To send your personal data to the General Dental Council or other authority as required by law
- To communicate with you as and when required including appointment reminders, treatment plans, estimates and other communications about your treatment or the practice
- To communicate with your next of kin in an emergency
- If a parent or carer to communicate with you about the person you parent or care for
- To refer you to other dentists or doctors and health professionals as required
- To obtain criminal record disclosures for team members
- For debt recovery
- To continually improve the care and service you receive from us

The personal data we process includes:

Your name, address, gender, date of birth, NHS number, medical history, dental history, family medical history, family contact details, marital status, financial details for processing payment, your doctor’s details and details of treatment at the practice. We may process more sensitive special category data including ethnicity, race or religion so that we can meet our obligations under the Equality Act 2010, or for example to modify treatment to suit your religion and to meet NHS obligations.

The retention period for special data in patient records is a minimum of 10 years and may be longer for complex records or to meet our legal requirements. The retention period for staff records is 6 years. The retention periods for other personal data is 2 years after it was last processed. Details of retention periods are available in the Record Retention (M 215) procedure available from the practice.

We obtain your personal details when you enquire about our care and service, when you join the practice, when you complete a registration or medical history form and when another practitioner refers you for treatment at our practice. Occasionally patients are referred to us from other official sources such as NHS clinics or hospitals.

You have the following personal data rights:

- The right to be informed about the collection and use of your personal data
- The right of access – to have a free copy of your data that we have
- The right to rectification - to correct the data we have if it is inaccurate or incomplete
- The right to deletion of your personal data (clinical records must be retained for a certain time period, however we shall deactivate your record upon request)
- The right to restrict processing of your personal data
- The right to data portability – to have your data transferred to someone else
- The right to object to the processing of your personal data.
- Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling

Further details of these rights can be seen in our Information Governance Procedures (M 217C) or at the Information Commissioner’s website. Here are some practical examples of your rights:

If you are a patient of the practice you have the right to withdraw consent for important notifications, newsletters, surveys or marketing. You can inform us to correct errors in your personal details or withdraw consent from communication methods such as telephone, email or text. You have the right to obtain a free copy of your patient records within one month.

If you are not a patient of the practice you have the right to withdraw consent for processing personal data, to have a free copy of it within one month, to correct errors in it or to ask us to delete it. You can also withdraw consent from communication methods such as telephone, email or text.

We have carried out a Privacy Impact Assessment (M 217Q) and you can request a copy from the details below. The details of how we ensure security of personal data is in our Security Risk Assessment (M 217M) and Information Governance Procedures (M 217C).

Comments, suggestions and complaints
Please contact the IG Lead at the practice for a comment, suggestion or a complaint about your data processing at maria@grange-dental.co.uk. We take complaints very seriously.

If you are unhappy with our response or if you need any advice you should contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Their telephone number is 0303 123 1113, you can also chat online with an advisor. The ICO can investigate your claim and take action against anyone who’s misused personal data. You can also visit their website for information on how to make a data protection complaint.

Related practice procedures
You can also use these contact details to request copies of the following practice policies or procedures:

- Data Protection and Information Security Policy (M 233-DPT), Consent Policy (M 233-CNS)
- Privacy Impact Assessment (M 217S), Information Governance Procedures (M 217C), Record Retention (M 215)

If you have an enquiry or a request please contact the Information Governance Lead, Maria Phillips.

Thank you.

Data Opt-Out Policy
(England)

How the NHS and care services use your information:

Grange Dental Surgery and Hygiene Centre 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. The information collected about you when you use these services can also be used and provided to other organisations for purposes beyond your individual care, for instance to help with:

- Improving the quality and standards of care provided
- Research into the development of new treatments
- Preventing illness and diseases
- Monitoring safety
- Planning services

This may only take place when there is a clear legal basis to use this information. All these uses help to provide better health and care for you, your family and future generations. Confidential patient information about your health and care is only used like this where allowed by law.

Most of the time, anonymised data is used for research and planning so that you cannot be identified in which case your confidential patient information isn’t needed.

You have a choice about whether you want your confidential patient information to be used in this way. If you are happy with this use of information you do not need to do anything. If you do choose to opt out your confidential patient information will still be used to support your individual care. To find out more or to register your choice to opt out, please visit www.nhs.uk/your-nhs-data-matters. On this web page you will:

- See what is meant by confidential patient information
- Find examples of when confidential patient information is used for individual care and examples of when it is used for purposes beyond individual care
- Find out more about the benefits of sharing data
- Understand more about who uses the data
- Find out how your data is protected
- Be able to access the system to view, set or change your opt-out setting
- Find the contact telephone number if you want to know any more or to set/change your opt-out by phone
- See the situations where the opt-out will not apply

You can also find out more about how patient information is used at:
https://www.hra.nhs.uk/information-about-patients/ (which covers health and care research); and
https://understandingpatientdata.org.uk/what-you-need-know (which covers how and why patient information is used, the safeguards and how decisions are made)

You can change your mind about your choice at any time.

Data being used or shared for purposes beyond individual care does not include your data being shared with insurance companies or used for marketing purposes and data would only be used in this way with your specific agreement.

Health and care organisations have until 2020 to put systems and processes in place so they can be compliant with the national data opt-out and apply your choice to any confidential patient information they use or share for purposes beyond your individual care.

Our practice only uses your personal health data to provide individualised care to you and does not disclose your data for any other purposes. The national data opt-out does not apply to our usage of your data and we are compliant with the policy.

Privacy Notice for Children

The practice keeps records of your name, address, date of birth and details of any health problems as well as details of your dental treatment and details about your family. We keep this information so that we can provide you with the best dental care. Your personal information is kept very confidentially and securely.

We only use your personal information so we can give you the best dental care and for sending reminders to you.

We only pass your personal information to another dentist, doctor or hospital if you have a problem that needs their special skills and you need to go and see them. We will not give your information to anyone else unless the law allows us to or we have to provide it for legal reasons.

If you leave the practice, we will stop using your information, but will keep it confidentially and securely until you are 25 years old, when we will review if and when we can delete it. You can always ask for a copy of the information we hold for you, we can transfer it to another dentist or doctor at your request and you can ask us to stop using your personal information to send letters or contact you in other ways if you are no longer a patient at the practice.

When you reach 18 years of age the Privacy Notice about how we process your personal information will change to the adult version. This can be found on our website.

If you would like a copy of the information we hold about you or if you have any other enquiries it about such as to change an error in your information or to provide a copy of your information to somebody else please contact:

The Information Governance Lead, Paul Cassar.

Patient Complaints Procedure

It is our aim to always have satisfied patients, to meet your expectations of care and service and to resolve any complaints as efficiently, effectively and politely as possible. We take complaints very seriously, investigating them in a full and fair way and take great care to protect your confidentiality. We learn from complaints to improve our care and service. We will never discriminate against patients who have made a complaint and we will be happy to answer any questions you may have about this procedure

If you are not entirely satisfied with any aspect of our care or service, please let us know as soon as possible to allow us to address your concerns promptly. We accept complaints made verbally as well as written complaints. If you do not feel you can raise a complaint about your NHS service directly with us, you can address your complaint directly to NHS England at england.contactus@nhs.net with ‘For the attention of the complaints team’ in the subject line.

Paul Cassar is the Complaints Manager and will be your personal contact to assist you with any complaints. We aim to resolve verbal complaints within 24 hours where possible, but if you complain in writing the Complaints Manager will will send an acknowledgement letter within 3 working days and will aim to provide a full response in writing as soon as practical.

You can send your complaints to 30 West Street, Chichester, West Sussex, PO191QS, call us on 01243 784688 or email the Complaints Manager on enquiries@grange-dental.co.uk. 

If the Complaints Manager is unavailable, we will take brief details about the complaint and will arrange for a meeting when it is suitable for you and the practice. We will keep comprehensive and confidential records of your complaint, which will be stored securely and only be accessible by those who need to know about your complaint. If the complaint investigation takes longer than anticipated, the Complaints Manager will contact you at least every ten working day to keep you informed of the reason for any delays, the progress of the investigation and the proposed date it will be completed.

When the investigation has been completed, you will be informed of its outcome in writing. We will make our response clear, addressing each of your concerns as best as we can. You will also be invited to a meeting to discuss the results and any practical solutions that we can offer to you. These solutions could include replacing treatment, refunding fees paid, referring you for specialist treatments or other solutions that meet your needs and resolve the complaint.

We regularly analyse patient complaints to learn from them and to improve our services. That’s why we always welcome your feedback, comments, suggestions and complaints. If you are dissatisfied with our response to a complaint you can take the matter further, please see the contacts below.

If you are dissatisfied with our response to a complaint you can contact the GDC private dental complaints service within 12 months of the treatment or within 12 months of becoming aware of the issue. Please see the contact details below.

Contacts
GDC private dental complaints service can be contacted by calling 020 8253 0800 or visiting www.dentalcomplaints.org.uk.

If you are still unhappy about your NHS complaint, you can contact the Parliamentary Health Ombudsman (England): by calling 0345 015 4033 or visiting www.ombudsman.org.uk

You can also contact The Care Quality Commission (CQC) who regulates private and NHS dental care services in England by calling 03000 616161. They can take action against a service provider that is not meeting their standards.

The General Dental Council is responsible for regulating all dental professionals. You can complain using their online form at www.gdc-uk.org contact them on information@gdc-org.uk or by calling 020 7167 6000.