DATA PROTECTION PRIVACY NOTICE: RHEUMATOLOGY CONSULTING NI (RCNI)
What is GDPR?
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a new regulation which is intended to strengthen and unify data protection for all individuals.
RCNI is committed to ensuring the protection of your personal information. In accordance with GDPR guidelines our aim is to have safeguards in place to protect your privacy and ensure that you feel confident about the security of the personal data which you provide to us.
Data Protection Privacy Notice
This Privacy Notice is to let you know that RCNI will look after your personal information. If we provide you with a medical service then we will use your personal information in the ways set out in this Privacy Notice. Under Data Protection Laws, we can only process your personal information where we have a proper reason for doing so, such as:- It is in our legitimate interests to do so – eg. A legitimate interest is when we have a reason to use your information to enable us to provide treatment or care and order medical tests. We are required to do so by law, ie. A legal obligation You have entered a contract with us for a service In the public interest – where this has a clear basis in law Vital interests – for example protection of life in a medical emergency
What Personal Data do we collect? Personal Data is any information that is identifiable as belonging to you. RCNI will receive the personal information that you provide for the sole purpose of creating a medical file for you.
Personal Data collected may include:- Patient’s name, Date of Birth, Health & Care No, Contact Telephone No, GP name and address Medical Records/letters sent by your GP or other referring Health Practitioner or from the NI Electronic Care Record system – https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/articles/northern-ireland-electronic-care-record-niecr, as well as copies of clinic letters, results of investigations, results letters and referral letters, Email address
Why do we collect data and who are the recipients of the data? We collect data which is necessary for RCNI to provide medical care and to enable the doctors and staff to communicate with your General Practitioner and other relevant Health Professionals. Hard copies of medical records (copies of clinic letters, results of investigations, results letters and referral letters) are stored.
How long will the data be retained? Data will not be retained for any longer than is required. We will retain your medical records for 8-10 years, as required by our insurance provider and as required by regulations (Access to Health Records Legislation (NI) Order 1993 and Records Management – Good Management Good Records, DHSS revised October 2015).
Individual Rights under GDPR You have a number of rights under the Data Protection Laws in relation to the way we process your personal data which are set out below.
Right to be Informed – this is provided through this privacy notice on our website. Right of Access-you have the right to access your personal data and supplementary information. We will aim to respond to any request received from you within one month from your request, although this may be extended in some circumstances in line with Data Protection Laws. If you wish to obtain access to your file, you must write to us (Rheumatology Consulting NI, 25 Derryvolgie Avenue, Belfast, BT9 6FN). Access to your data will usually be provided free of charge, although in certain circumstances we may make a small charge which we are entitled to do under Data Protection Laws. Right to Rectification-the right to ask us to correct your information if you think the information that we hold about you is wrong or incomplete. We will respond within one month. Right to Erasure-the right to object to our use of your information, or to ask us to delete, remove or stop keeping it if there is no need for us to keep it. This is known as the ‘right to object’, the ‘right to erasure’ or the ‘right to be forgotten.’ There may however be legal or regulatory reasons why we need to keep or use your information. Right to restrict processing- we may sometimes be able to restrict the use of your information so that it is only used for legal claims or to exercise legal rights. In these situations we would not use or share your information while it is restricted. Right to Data Portability-the right to data portability allows individuals to obtain and reuse their personal data for their own purposes across different services. Right to Object-Individuals have the right to object to processing based on legitimate interests or the performance of a task in the public interest/exercise of official authority. There is a contractual requirement when patients attend RCNI for their personal data to be processed in order to provide medical care and treatment. Right not to be evaluated on the basis of automated processing-patients who attend RCNI will not be evaluated on the basis of automated processing nor is any decision making automated.
Cookies. We may also collect information from you through the use of cookies. Cookies are small files which are stored on your computer browser. The cookie law is a piece of privacy legislation that requires websites to get consent from visitors to store or retrieve any information on a computer, smartphone or tablet eg, you may have a pop-up message informing you that this site uses cookies in combination with an acceptance/decline box, and it will be your decision whether you wish to accept or decline the use of the cookie.
Links from our Website Our website may contain links to other websites. If you provide personal/sensitive data to a website to which we are linked to we are not responsible for its protection and privacy. This privacy statement only applies to www.rheumatologyconsultingni.com.
