Practice Policies & Patient Information
Confidentiality at Reception
The reception area and waiting room is an open environment. Booking in on arrival for your appointment can be done using the Check-In screen. If you choose to check in with the receptionist, or the Check-In screen has not recognised your details we will only ask your name, date of birth and address for purposes of identification. We will not ask for details of your need for an appointment. We will not discuss results at the front desk. If you need to speak privately ask and a receptionist will be called down who will take you to a private area to do this. We cannot do this after 4.30pm.
Equality Mission Statement
We are an organisation committed to ensuring that all our patients and staff are protected from unlawful discrimination.
Direct discrimination occurs where someone is treated less favourably and put at a disadvantage on discriminatory grounds in relation to his or her treatment. Direct discrimination may even occur unintentionally.
No patient will receive less favourable treatment on the grounds of sex, race, colour, religion, religious or philosophical belief, nationality, age, ethnic origin, marital status, civil partnership, disability, sexual orientation or gender re-assignment.
No member of the practice’s staff – GP, nurse, administration or reception staff will receive less favourable treatment from patients on the grounds of sex, race, colour, religion, religious or philosophical belief, nationality, age, ethnic origin, marital status, civil partnership, disability, sexual orientation or gender re-assignment.
Any patient or employee who believes he or she may have been unfairly discriminated against is encouraged to use our Equality Policy.
Any patient who conducts himself or herself in a discriminatory manner (whether on the grounds of sex, race, colour, religion, religious or philosophical belief, nationality, age, ethnic origin, marital status, civil partnership, disability, sexual orientation or gender re-assignment) towards another patient or member of staff will be guilty of gross misconduct and will be dealt with according to our Equality Policy.
Any member of staff who conducts himself or herself in a discriminatory manner (whether on the grounds of sex, race, colour, religion, religious or philosophical belief, nationality, age, ethnic origin, marital status, civil partnership, disability, sexual orientation or gender re-assignment) towards a patient or member of staff will be guilty of gross misconduct and will be subject to the Practice Disciplinary Procedure.
GDPR
General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) comes into effect on 25th May 2018.
Please refer to our Documents section to view our Practice Privacy Notice.
Any questions please contact the Practice Manager, Jackie Kelly.
GP Earnings
All GP practices are required to declare the mean earnings (e.g. average pay) for GPs working to deliver NHS services to patients at each practice. However, it should be noted that the prescribed method for calculating earnings is potentially misleading because it takes no account of how much time doctors spend working in the practice and should not be used to for any judgement about GP earnings, nor to make any comparisons with other practices.
The average pay for GPs working at The New Surgery in the last financial year was £105,880 before tax and national insurance. This is for 1 full time GPs, 3 part time GPs and 0 locum GPs who worked in the practice for more than 6 months.
Patient Online Services – Detailed Coded Records
Online access to parts of the information contained within your medical records is now available, this is in addition to the other online services which we currently offer:
- Order repeat prescriptions
- Book and cancel your appointments
- View your allergies
- View your medical history
This additional service means you will be able to view certain parts of your medical record.
You will need to complete application forms to have access to online services and you will have to provide two forms of identification.
Please note the use of family emails is not acceptable, each individual applying for an online account must have their own individual email address.
For more information please ask at reception.
Primary Care Support Team
All patient services are overseen by:
Primary Care Support Team
Kent and Medway Area
PO Box 350
Darlington
DL1 9QN
Privacy Notices
- PN – CCTV Policy
- PN – Commissioning, Planning, risk stratification, patient identification
- PN – CQC
- PN – Data Protection
- PN – Direct Care
- PN –Direct Care (Emergencies)
- PN – Direct Care (Routine)
- PN – Human Resources
- PN – National Screening Programs
- PN – NHS Digital
- PN – Notice for Payments
- PN – Processing Activity
- PN – Public Health
- PN – Public WIFI
- PN – Research
- PN – Safeguarding
- PN – Statutory Disclosure
- PN – Summary Care Record
- iGPR-Superior Managed Service Welcome Pack
- iGPR Superior Managed Service Refer Enquiries
Privacy Policy – Direct Care (routine care and referrals)
The New Surgery
This practice keeps data on you relating to who you are, where you live, what you do, your family, possibly your friends, your employers, your habits, your problems and diagnoses, the reasons you seek help, your appointments, where you are seen and when you are seen, who by, referrals to specialists and other healthcare providers, tests carried out here and in other places, investigations and scans, treatments and outcomes of treatments, your treatment history, the observations and opinions of other healthcare workers, within and without the NHS as well as comments and aide memoires reasonably made by healthcare professionals in this practice who are appropriately involved in your health care.
When registering for NHS care, all patients who receive NHS care are registered on a national database, the database is held by NHS Digital, a national organisation which has legal responsibilities to collect NHS Data.
GPs have always delegated tasks and responsibilities to others that work with them in their surgeries, on average an NHS GP has between 1,500 to 2,500 patients for whom he or she is accountable. It is not possible for the GP to provide hands on personal care for each and every one of those patients in those circumstances, for this reason GPs share your care with others, predominantly within the surgery but occasionally with outside organisations. If your health needs require care from others elsewhere outside this practice we will exchange with them whatever information about you that is necessary for them to provide that care. When you make contact with healthcare providers outside the practice but within the NHS it is usual for them to send us information relating to that encounter. We will retain part or all of those reports. Normally we will receive equivalent reports of contacts you have with non NHS services but this is not always the case.
Your consent to this sharing of data, within the practice and with those others outside the practice is assumed and is allowed by the Law.
People who have access to your information will only normally have access to that which they need to fulfil their roles, for instance admin staff will normally only see your name, address, contact details, appointment history and registration details in order to book appointments, the practice nurses will normally have access to your immunisation, treatment, significant active and important past histories, your allergies and relevant recent contacts whilst the GP you see or speak to will normally have access to everything in your record.
You have the right to object to our sharing your data in these circumstances but we have an overriding responsibility to do what is in your best interests. Please see below.
We are required by Articles in the General Data Protection Regulations to provide you with the information in the following 9 subsections.
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1) Data Controller contact details
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The New Surgery – 128, Canterbury Road, Folkestone, Kent CT19 5SR
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2) Data Protection Officer contact details
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The Data Protection Office (DPO) is to be confirmed. In the meantime, please contact the Practice Manager. |
3) Purpose of the processing | Direct Care is care delivered to the individual alone, most of which is provided in the surgery or at the Urgent Treatment Centre After a patient agrees to a referral for direct care elsewhere, such as a referral to a specialist in a hospital, necessary and relevant information about the patient, their circumstances and their problem will need to be shared with the other healthcare workers, such as specialist, therapists, technicians etc. The information that is shared is to enable the other healthcare workers to provide the most appropriate advice, investigations, treatments, therapies and or care.
ACR project for patients with diabetes The data is being processed for the purpose of delivery of a programme, sponsored by NHS Digital, to monitor urine for indications of chronic kidney disease (CKD) which is recommended to be undertaken annually for patients at risk of chronic kidney disease e.g., patients living with diabetes. The programme enables patients to test their kidney function from home. We will share your contact details with Healthy.io to enable them to contact you and confirm that you wish them to send you a test kit. This will help identify patients at risk of kidney disease and help us agree any early interventions that can be put in place for the benefit of your care. Healthy.io will only use your data for the purposes of delivering their service to you. If you do not wish to receive a home test kit from Healthy.io we will continue to manage your care within the Practice. Healthy.io are required to hold data we send them in line with retention periods outlined in the Records Management code of Practice for Health and Social Care. Further information about this is available at: https://bit.ly/3xpSq5q.
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4) Lawful basis for processing | The processing of personal data in the delivery of direct care and for providers’ administrative purposes in this surgery and in support of direct care elsewhere is supported under the following Article 6 and 9 conditions of the GDPR:
Article 6(1)(e) ‘…necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority…’. Article 9(2)(h) ‘necessary for the purposes of preventative or occupational medicine for the assessment of the working capacity of the employee, medical diagnosis, the provision of health or social care or treatment or the management of health or social care systems and services…”
We will also recognise your rights established under UK case law collectively known as the “Common Law Duty of Confidentiality”* |
5) Recipient or categories of recipients of the processed data | The data will be shared with Health and care professionals and support staff in this surgery and at hospitals, diagnostic and treatment centres who contribute to your personal care. |
6) Rights to object | You have the right to object to some or all the information being processed under Article 21. Please contact the Data Controller or the practice. You should be aware that this is a right to raise an objection, that is not the same as having an absolute right to have your wishes granted in every circumstance |
7) Right to access and correct | You have the right to access the data that is being shared and have any inaccuracies corrected. There is no right to have accurate medical records deleted except when ordered by a court of Law. |
8) Retention period | The data will be retained in line with the law and national guidance. https://digital.nhs.uk/article/1202/Records-Management-Code-of-Practice-for-Health-and-Social-Care-2016
or speak to the practice.
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9) Right to Complain. | You have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office, you can use this link https://ico.org.uk/global/contact-us/
or calling their helpline Tel: 0303 123 1113 (local rate) or 01625 545 745 (national rate) There are National Offices for Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, (see ICO website) |
* “Common Law Duty of Confidentiality”, common law is not written out in one document like an Act of Parliament. It is a form of law based on previous court cases decided by judges; hence, it is also referred to as ‘judge-made’ or case law. The law is applied by reference to those previous cases, so common law is also said to be based on precedent.
The general position is that if information is given in circumstances where it is expected that a duty of confidence applies, that information cannot normally be disclosed without the information provider’s consent.
In practice, this means that all patient information, whether held on paper, computer, visually or audio recorded, or held in the memory of the professional, must not normally be disclosed without the consent of the patient. It is irrelevant how old the patient is or what the state of their mental health is; the duty still applies.
Three circumstances making disclosure of confidential information lawful are:
- where the individual to whom the information relates has consented;
- where disclosure is in the public interest; and
- where there is a legal duty to do so, for example a court order.
There is a more in-depth Privacy Notice, if you wish to view this please contact the practice
Suggestions, Compliments and Complaints Procedure
If you have any suggestions or helpful ideas, please speak or write to the Practice Manager who will relay them to the Partners for further consideration. If you any compliments to make about the surgery please speak or write to the Practice Manager who will be pleased to received them and pass on to the staff. There is a complaints procedure in place at the practice. Any complaints should be addressed, in the first instance, to the Practice Manager who will contact you and explain the procedure to be followed. The Practice Manager will ensure that your concerns are dealt with promptly and courteously.
Summary Care Record
There is a new Central NHS Computer System called the Summary Care Record (SCR). It is an electronic record which contains information about the medicines you take, allergies you suffer from and any bad reactions to medicines you have had.
Why do I need a Summary Care Record?
Storing information in one place makes it easier for healthcare staff to treat you in an emergency, or when your GP practice is closed.
This information could make a difference to how a doctor decides to care for you, for example which medicines they choose to prescribe for you.
Who can see it?
Only healthcare staff involved in your care can see your Summary Care Record.
How do I know if I have one?
Over half of the population of England now have a Summary Care Record. You can find out whether Summary Care Records have come to your area by looking at our interactive map or by asking your GP
Do I have to have one?
No, it is not compulsory. If you choose to opt out of the scheme, then you will need to complete a form and bring it along to the surgery. You can use the form at the foot of this page.
More Information
For further information visit the NHS Care records website or the HSCIC Website
Download the opt out form >>>>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=V0KIN0Tq5_w
Training Practice
We have experienced hospital doctors, nurses and students working here from time to time, learning about general practice.
During the GP Resistrars’ training you may be asked to take part in their training programme by having your consultation videoed. You would be asked to sign a consent form and you are at liberty to refuse. This is to help the GP Registrar reflect and understand their consultation technique.
The poster below is displayed in the waiting room.
Training Practices in Kent, Surrey and Sussex
Information for patients
This practice has been accredited to train doctors intending to become general practitioners.
The practice needs to be regularly inspected for this purpose, and this involves inspection of the medical records. Only doctors approved for this purpose will do this, and they will respect completely the confidentiality of the information.
If you do not want your records to be available for inspection then please inform the practice of your wishes.
Sometimes the doctor may wish to video record his or her consultations, and in this case your permission will always be requested beforehand.
Further information about training in this practice is available from the receptionist.
Zero Tolerance Policy
NHS Staff must be able to come to work without fear of violence, abuse or harassment from patients or their relatives. The NHS has a zero tolerance attitude towards violence (1).
Violent, threatening or abusive behaviour including shouting and swearing will not be tolerated at this practice.
Patients who act in such a manner will be asked to leave the premises; the Police may be called and you could be removed from our patient list.
Our staff are here to help you, please treat them with respect.
(1) NHS Employers – Violence Against Staff