Our Address

862 Walsall Road, Birmingham B42 1ES

Get In Touch With Us

0121 358 0900

Data Protection

Why do we hold information about you?

We need to keep comprehensive and accurate personal data about our patients in order to provide them with safe and appropriate dental care. We also need to process personal data about you in order to provide care under NHS arrangements and to ensure the proper management and administration of the NHS.

Patient Records

This practice complies with the Data Protection Act 2018, Freedom of Information Act 2000, General Dental Council guidelines and will comply with the new GDPR 2018 regulations. This policy describes our procedures for ensuring that personal information about patients is processed fairly and lawfully.

What personal data do we hold?

In order to provide you with a high standard of dental care and attention, we need to hold personal information about you. This personal data comprises:

  • Your past and current medical and dental condition; personal details such as your age, national insurance number/NHS number, address, telephone number, email address and your general medical practitioner.
  • Any correspondence relating to you with other health care professionals, for example in the hospital or community services.
  • Records of consent to treatment.
  • Notes of conversations / incidents that might occur for which a record needs to be kept.
  • Radiographs, clinical photographs and study models.
  • Information about the treatment that we have provided or propose to provide and its cost.

How we process the data

We will process personal data that we hold about you in the following way:

Retaining information

We will retain your dental records while you are a practice patient and after you cease to be a patient for at least 10 years or until the patient is 25, whichever is the longer.

Security of information

Personal data about you is held in the practice’s computer system and/or in a manual filing system. The information is not accessible to the public and only authorised members of staff have access to it. Our computer system has secure audit trails and we back up information routinely.

Disclosure of information

In order to provide proper and safe dental care, we may need to disclose personal information about you to:

  • Your general medical practitioner
  • The hospital or community dental services
  • Other health professionals caring for you
  • NHS payment authorities
  • The Inland Revenue
  • The Benefits Agency, where you are claiming exemption or remission from NHS charges
  • Private dental schemes of which you are a member.

 

Disclosure will take place on a ‘need-to-know’ basis, so that only those individuals/organisations who need to know in order to provide care to you and for the proper administration of Government (whose personnel are covered by strict confidentiality rules) will be given the information. Only that information that the recipient needs to know will be disclosed.

Where possible you will be informed of these requests for disclosure.

Access

You have the right of access to the data that we hold about you and to receive a copy. Access may be obtained in writing or by asking for a Subject Access Request form from reception. We will provide a copy of the record within one month of receipt of the request.