The practice will not share personal identifiable data and or other confidential data about patients to support the planning of NHS and social care services, without seeking explicit patient consent to do this.

However, the Practice may share data about patients in a non-personal format (either anonymised* or pseudonymised) in order to support the planning of NHS and social care services. This data will only be used for health and social planning purposes and not for any other purposes (such as commercial, insurance or marketing purposes) Sharing of such data will be managed in accordance to a formal sharing arrangement and under tight Information Governance controls.

*Anonymisation: is the process of rendering data into a form which does not identify individuals or makes the risk of re-identification sufficiently low in a particular context that does not constitute personal data.

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.

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.