Fairwater Health Centre holds a lot of confidential information about you as a patient. All clinical and administrative staff will have access to the information, but it will only be used to help with your care. Information will occasionally need to be shared with other people outside of the Health Centre. These might be hospital doctors who the GP has referred you to, community based health care providers or agencies such as social services. The information will only be shared when in your best interests and only information relevant and necessary will be share. Information maybe shared with non health and social care agencies such as insurance companies, but this is only done with your written consent. You can also request that information is not shared.
For further information on why the NHS holds personal information and what it is used for, click the following link:
https://www.nhsdirect.wales.nhs.uk/lifestylewellbeing/yourinfoyourrights
The Practice also has a CCTV system installed. The purpose of this system is to:
- Protect the safety, security and wellbeing of staff, patients, visitors and contractors
- Prevent and detect crime within the Practice and may be used to support the prosecution of offenders
- Facilitate learning through reflections as a result of incidents occurring within the monitored areas
Images from the CCTV will only be used for the purposes stated above. Images are saved to a hard drive, retained for 30 days and then automatically deleted.
Access to Medical Records
Please telephone the surgery to book an appointment with the Practice Manager to obtain access to your medical records. This is known as a Subject Access Request.
There is generally no charge for copies of your medical records requested by you personally unless a large amount of information has to be copied or you make frequent requests for copies of your medical records. If a charge is applied, it will be to cover our reasonable administrative costs for producing the copies.
If an instance company or solicitors acting for you wish to obtain your medical records, they should normally make the request under the Access to Medical Records Act scheme.
Freedom of Information Act
FOI is all about the right of access to information held by public authorities. It came into force in full on 1 January 2005.
The FOI Act gives two related rights:
- The right to be told whether the information exists
- The right to receive the information
The Act places a duty on public authorities such as the Fairwater Health Centre to adopt and maintain publication schemes. The Health Centre has adopted the Information Commissioner’s model publication scheme. Details of the scheme, the information available under it and any associated charges are on the documents page of this website.
Requesting Information
Some common information can be found in the Practice’s publication scheme on the Practice Documents page. The Practice website generally has a large amount of commonly requested information.
Requests for information must be made in writing, which includes email. The request must state the name and address of the person applying for the information and must clearly state the information required.
Fairwater Health Centre will respond to requests within 20 working days.
FOI Charges
There is no charge for the Publication Scheme itself. However, Fairwater Health Centre may charge a fee for responding to your request for information within the FOI Act depending on the class of request. If there is a charge, this will be shown as a sign in the publication scheme. The 20 days for responding to requests is put on hold until the fee is paid. If the fee is not paid within 3 months, it is assumed the applicant no longer wants the information.