Sidings Healthcare Ltd is committed to providing a safe, comfortable environment where patients and staff can be confident that best practice is being followed at all times and the safety of everyone is of paramount importance. All of our staff have undertaken formal Chaperone training delivered by the Primary Care Training Centre and have been accredited to carry out these duties.

All patients are entitled to have a ‘chaperone’ present for any consultation, examination or procedure where they feel one is required. The chaperone may be a family member or friend. On occasions you may prefer a formal chaperone to be present, i.e., a trained member of staff.

Wherever possible we would ask you to make this request at the time of booking the appointment so the arrangements can be made, and your appointment is not delayed in any way. Where this is not possible, we will endeavour to provide a formal chaperone at the time of request. However occasionally it may be necessary to reschedule your appointment.

Your healthcare professional may also require a chaperone to be present for certain consultations in accordance with our chaperone policy. The Clinicians record in your record when a ‘chaperone’ has been offered, declined, requested etc and our chaperones also make a separate entry also into the Electronic Patient Record (EPR).

If you have any questions or comments regarding this, please ask to speak to the Practice Manager Kath Farrar.

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.

Freedom of Information

Information about the General Practitioners and the practice required for disclosure under this act can be made available to the public. All requests for such information should be made to the practice manager.

Access to Records

In accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998 and Access to Health Records Act, patients may request to see their medical records. Such requests should be made through the practice manager and may be subject to an administration charge. No information will be released without the patient consent unless we are legally obliged to do so.

All GP practices are required to declare the mean earnings (e.g. average pay) for GPs working to deliver NHS services to patients at each practice

The average pay for GP’s working at Sidings Healthcare Centre in the last financial year was £52782.00 before tax and national insurance. This is for 2 full time GP’s and 2 part time GP’s who worked in the practice for more than six months.

NHS England require that the net earnings of doctors engaged in the practice are publicised, and the required disclosure is shown above. However it should be noted that the prescribed method for calculating earnings is potentially misleading because it takes no account of how much time doctors spend working in the practice, and should not be used to form any judgment about GP earnings, nor to make any comparison with any other practice.

A programme sponsored by NHS Digital to monitor urine albumin:creatinine ratio (ACR) annually for patients with diabetes. This enables patients with diabetes to test their kidney function from home. We will share your contact details with Healthy.io to enable them to contact you and confirm that you wish them to send you a test kit.

This will help identify patients at risk of kidney disease and help us agree any early interventions that can be put in place for the benefit of your care.

If you do not wish to take part in the service, you have the opportunity to decline when Healthy.io contact you.  If you do not wish to receive any further information from Healthy.io then they will delete any data that they hold about you and we will continue to manage your care within the Practice.

Further information about this is available at: http://bit.ly/testACR.

The NHS operate a zero-tolerance policy with regard to violence and abuse and the practice has the right to remove violent patients from the list with immediate effect in order to safeguard practice staff, patients and other persons.

Violence in this context includes actual or threatened physical violence or verbal abuse which leads to fear for a person’s safety.

In this situation we will notify the patient in writing of their removal from the list and record in the patient’s medical records the fact of the removal and the circumstances leading to it.