Market Cross Surgery

7 Market Place, Mildenhall, Suffolk, IP28 7EG

Policies

About us

We are a happy, informal, democratic partnership that is committed to the traditional concept of family medicine in the broadest sense, thus providing a comprehensive general medical service.

There are nine doctors who are supported by the practice manager, a operations manager, six practice nurses, a health care assistant, nine receptionists, seven dispensers, as well as a team of administrative staff.

Attached to the practice we are pleased to have a community integrated team of district nurses, physiotherapists and occupational therapists who work very closely with the doctors.

Confidentiality

We ask you for your personal information so that you can receive care and treatment. We keep this information, together with details of your care, because it may be needed if we see you again.

We may use some of this information for other reasons:  for example, to help us protect the health of the public generally and to see that the NHS runs efficiently, plans for the future, trains its staff and can account for its actions.   Information may also be needed to help educate tomorrows clinical staff and to carry out medical and other health research for the benefit of everyone.

You may be receiving care from other people as well as the NHS.  So that we can all work together for your benefit we may need to share some information about you.

We only ever use or pass on information about you if people have a genuine need for it in your and everyone’s interest.  The sharing of some types of very sensitive personal information is strictly controlled by law.  Whenever we can, we remove details which identify you.

Sometimes the law requires us to pass on information; for example, to notify a birth to the Registrar of Births & Deaths

Anyone who receives information from us is under a legal duty to keep it confidential.
Everyone working for the NHS has a legal duty to keep information about you confidential and you have the right to say no if you do not want information about you given to others.

If you would like to know more about how we use your information you can speak to the person in charge of your care or ask any member of staff.

Training health care professionals

The Surgery is a recognised training Practice and is involved in teaching medical students from Cambridge, GP registrars (qualified doctors doing specialist GP training), and nurses.  Occasionally one might be present during a consultation.  If you are not happy to discuss your problem in front of a third person, please ask to see the doctor or nurse alone.

Policy for handling patient samples

Samples which you provide will be promptly processed for those tests requested by your doctor.  Any remaining samples may be used for checking other laboratory tests, teaching, research or public health monitoring in the future interests of all NHS patients.

All samples used in this way will be anonymised beforehand to ensure confidentiality is maintained, and that you cannot be identified.  All research that takes place must be approved by the Trust’s Research Governance Committee and by the independent West Suffolk Research Ethics Committee before it starts.

You may request that your sample is not used for these purposes and we will mark the form and sample to ensure that your wishes are complied with and the sample disposed of.  We regret that we are normally unable to return any samples to you for health and safety reasons.

Obligations and responsibilities

We aim to treat our patients courteously at all times and expect our patients to treat our staff in a similarly respectful way.  We take seriously any threatening, abusive or violent behaviour against any of our staff or patients.  If a patient is violent or abusive, they will be warned to stop their behaviour.  If they persist, we may exercise our right to have them removed, immediately if necessary, from our list of patients.

Patient Rights

• To be treated with respect and courtesy by all Practice staff

• To have a copy of the Practice Leaflet

• To have urgent problems assessed and dealt with on the same day

• To collect routine repeat prescriptions within 3 working days of ordering

• To have access to an understanding and rapid complaints procedure

Patients Responsibilities

• To treat Doctors and staff with the same respect and courtesy

• To read the Practice Leaflet in order to get better services

• To request urgent/emergency treatment only if absolutely necessary

• To notify the Surgery wherever possible if unable to keep an appointment

• To request repeat prescriptions in good time

 

Health Risk Screening / Risk Stratification

Health Risk Screening or Risk stratification is a process GPs use to help them to identify and support patients with long-term conditions and to help prevent un-planned hospital admissions or reduce the risk of certain diseases developing such as type 2 diabetes. This is called risk stratification for case-finding.

Risk stratification tools use historic information about patients, such as age, gender, diagnoses and patterns of hospital attendance and admission collected by NHS England from NHS hospitals and community care services. This is linked to data collected in GP practices and analysed to produce a risk score.

Your GP will routinely conduct the risk stratification process outside of your GP appointment. This process is conducted electronically and without human intervention. The resulting report is then reviewed by a multidisciplinary team of staff within the Practice. This may result in contact being made with you if alterations to the provision of your care are identified.

The ICB has agreed with NHS England s251 support for the NHS Number, as an identifier from both NHS England and GP Practice data, to be used to enable this work to take place. The Data is sent directly into a risk stratification tool called Eclipse from NHS England /GP Practices to enable the data to be linked and processed as described above. GPs can identify individual patients from the risk stratified data when it is necessary to discuss the outcome and consider preventative care. Your GP will use computer-based algorithms or calculations to identify their registered patients who are at most risk. Once the data is within the tool ICB staff only have access to anonymised or aggregated data.

Suffolk and North East Essex Integrated Care Board (SNEEICB) also uses risk stratified data with pseudonymised (non-identifiable) data to understand the health needs of the local population to plan and commission the right services. This is called risk stratification for commissioning.

Type of Information Used

Different types of commissioning data are legally allowed to be used by different organisations within, or contracted to, the NHS. Information put into the risk stratification tools used by the ICB:

• Age
• Gender
• GP Practice and Hospital attendances and admissions

• Medications prescribed
• Medical conditions (in code form) and other things that affect your health.

Legal Basis Statutory requirement for NHS England to collect identifiable information.

A Section 251 support approval (CAG 2-03(a)/2013) from the Secretary of State, through the Confidentiality Advisory Group of the Health Research Authority, enables the use of identifiable information about patients included in the datasets.

Data Processing Activities

The practice processes this data internally. Data is also processed by Prescribing Services Ltd (Eclipse) on behalf of the practice. Data is processed by the North of England Commissioning Support Unit on behalf of the ICB.

Opt-out / object details

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 not wish your data to be included in the risk stratification service you can choose to opt-out through the National Data Opt-Out process.

Where pseudonymised (non-identifiable) data is being used by the ICB, the National Data Opt-Out does not apply. The data is used in a format which does not directly identify you. You have the right to object to your information being used in this way; however, you should be aware that your objection may have a negative impact on the timely and proactive provision of your direct care. Should you choose to opt-out, please inform your GP practice who will apply an opt-out code to your record to ensure that your information is not included in the programme.

Please contact the Practice Manager to discuss how disclosure of your personal data can be limited.