Confidentiality

Only members of the Practice Team have access to Medical Records without patient consent. Any other parties requesting access to Medical Records can only do so with signed consent from the patient. A list of the practice team is available from reception, all of whom have signed a confidentiality contract.

The practice complies with Data Protection and Access to Medical Records legislation. Identifiable information about you will be shared with others in the following circumstances:

• To provide further medical treatment for you e.g. from district nurses and hospital services.
• To help you get other services e.g. from the social work department. This requires your consent.
• When we have a duty to others e.g. in child protection cases anonymised patient information will also be used at local and national level to help the Health Board and Government plan services e.g. for diabetic care.
• The Practice may conduct Medicines Management Reviews of medications prescribed to its patients. This service performs a review of prescribed medications to ensure patients receive the most appropriate, up to date and cost effective treatments. This service is may be provided by directly by the practice or by members of Sheffield CCG Medicines Management Team.

If you do not wish anonymous information about you to be used in such a way, please let us know.

Reception and administration staff require access to your medical records in order to do their jobs. These members of staff are bound by the same rules of confidentiality as the medical staff.

Freedom of Information

The ICO has further information about the Freedom of Information Act at https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/official-information/.

Practice Charter

“Every member of the Primary Health Care Team in Hackenthorpe is committed to providing a high quality, personal, confidential service, within the National Health Service”.  This service is not only provided to you when you are ill, but our aim is also to keep you healthy. 

Partnership. 

Our Staff are trained to be polite, courteous and helpful at all times.  They will always try to accommodate a Patients needs and requests if at all possible, within the service available.

In return we expect our Patients to treat our staff with respect and courtesy, realising that we are trying to provide a first class service to over 7000 patients so we are not always able to accommodate every individual request. In order to provide this service, we would ask any patient unable to attend an appointment to phone and cancel it in sufficient time to allow the slot to be offered to someone else.

Patients who regularly miss appointments or who verbally abuse any member of our team will be asked to register elsewhere. We operate an “ NHS ZERO TOLERANCE” Policy and physical abuse will be reported to the police. 

Suggestions and Complaints

We try to provide a high quality of care within the Practice, however if you have any complaints or suggestions, please contact the Practice Manager or if you prefer, one of the doctors and we will do our best to address any problems.   Positive suggestions to improve our service are always welcome.

PALS (Patient Advice and Liaison Service)

The NHS employs over a million staff in thousands of locations. It is a large and complex organisation providing a broad range of services. It is not surprising that sometimes you or a loved one may feel bewildered or concerned when using the NHS. And this can be at times when you are feeling at your most vulnerable and anxious.

So, what should you do if you want on the spot help when using the health service? The NHS expects all members of staff to listen and respond to you to the best of their ability. But sometimes, you may wish to talk to someone employed especially to help you. The Patient Advice and Liaison Service, known as PALS, has been introduced to ensure that the NHS listens to patients, their relatives, carers and friends, and answers their questions and resolves their concerns as quickly as possible.

PALS also helps the NHS to improve services by listening to what matters to patients and their loved ones and making changes, when appropriate.

What does PALS do?

In particular, PALS will:

• Provide you with information about the NHS and help you with any other health-related enquiry
• Help resolve concerns or problems when you are using the NHS
• Provide information about the NHS complaints procedure and how to get independent help if you decide you may want to make a complaint
• Provide you with information and help introduce you to agencies and support groups outside the NHS
• Inform you about how you can get more involved in your own healthcare and the NHS locally
• Improve the NHS by listening to your concerns, suggestions and experiences and ensuring that people who design and manage services are aware of the issues you raise
• Provide an early warning system for NHS Trusts and monitoring bodies by identifying problems or gaps in services and reporting them.

Find out more

If you would like more information about PALS, the functions it is intended to provide and the standards it should strive to achieve , follow this link.

Safeguarding Policy

Please note:-

In line with the latest Child Safeguarding Best Practice, we would like to inform all parents that medical records of children up to the age of their sixth birthday are automatically shared amongst appropriate agencies.

Thank you.

We are looking at ways to deliver more efficient help to patients with the most need. These are people with ongoing medical problems that are at risk of hospital admission.

Our aim is to work with other health care agencies to try and avoid hospital admission. This could be carers, Community Nurses, Pharmacists, Paramedics or Accident and Emergency staff. The idea is that with more efficient communication and working more closely, that we can treat people at home.

The way we can gather this information is from patient records. A 'risk stratification' tool is used which gives points for certain medical problems, age, previous hospital admissions, etc and gives a total per patient. We are then able to look at people with the higher numbers and target our work with them. The information from this tool is not shared with anyone else. It is simply a way of finding out who needs more care.

If you choose to opt out we will not be able to identify you as someone who may need help. For further information please contact the surgery.  

If you need to be referred to other Health agencies ie District Nurses, Hospital Consultants, and even out of hours services, it is helpful for them to be able to see your medical record, including information about any allergies you have, and also any medication you are taking.

Please Note

Important Information

The practice is automatically sharing relevant patient information appropriately and securely across the Health & Care System between professionals. This will:

Improve patient care and safety

Improve patient experience

improve effectiveness and efficiently of delivering of care

If you do not want your information sharing or would like more information please let the receptionist know.

We ask that our patients let us know if they experience communication difficulties and advise how we can help to overcome this.  New patients will be asked at their New Registration Chat with the Health Care Assistant, and existing patients will be identified opportunistically.

Information can be made available in various formats on request.

Please find below pdf versions of our Practice Leaflet and Complaints Procedure.

Practice Leaflet 2016

Patient Complaint Form

Privacy Notice

Privacy Notice

Children's Privacy Notice