A leaflet about your rights and what you can expect from us

Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust aims to provide you with high-quality care and services. To do this, we must keep records about you, and the care we provide for you.

All records are held electronically or on paper. We have a legal duty to ensure these are kept confidential, secure, accurate and available in accordance with data protection laws, the NHS Constitution and common law.

Our staff members undertake mandatory annual data security training to assist them when processing your information appropriately and to protect your privacy. We strive to maintain high standards, adopt best practice for our record keeping and regularly check and report on how we are doing. Your information is never collected for direct marketing purposes, and is not sold on to third parties. Your information is not sent outside the United Kingdom (UK) or the European Union (EU), unless there are appropriate controls in place. These controls are reviewed by our trust specialists.

Sometimes your care may be provided by members of a care team, which might include people from other organisations who provide services such as healthcare, social care, education and/or other types of care organisations. We have a legal duty to share information for your care however if you have any concerns around this, please do contact as you do have rights under UK law (please see ‘Individual Rights’ below). We may also use sub-contractors to process your data. They will be bound by law to maintain your privacy and have to meet certain conditions.

Information is held for the periods of time recommended by the NHS Records Management Code of Practice for Health and Social Care.

Information collected about you to deliver your healthcare is also used to assist with:

• making sure your care meets high standards
• assessing your condition against a set of risk criteria, to make sure you are receiving the best possible care
• using statistical information, to look after the health and wellbeing of the general population and planning services to meet the needs of the population
• preparing statistics on our performance for the Department of Health and other regulatory bodies
• helping train staff and support research
• supporting the funding of your care
• reporting and investigation of complaints, claims and untoward incidents
• reporting events to the appropriate authorities when we are required to do so by law.

The legal basis for the processing of data for these purposes is that the NHS is an official authority, with a public duty to care for its patients, as guided by the Department of Health. Data protection law says it is appropriate to do so for health and social care treatment of patients and the management of health or social care systems and services.

If we need to use your personal information for any reason not stated above, we will discuss this with you. You have the right to ask us not to use your information in this way, however there are some exceptions to this which are:

• the public interest is thought to be of greater importance for example:
  • if a serious crime has been committed
  • if there are risks to the public or our staff
  • to protect vulnerable children or adults.

• we have a legal duty, for example:

• • registering births
  • reporting some infectious diseases
  • reporting wounding by knives or firearms
  • court orders.

• we need to use the information for medical research without specific consent. In this case we have to ask permission from the Secretary of State for Health. An example is carrying out mass surveys of cancer patients to determine the effectiveness of treatment over a long period.

We also have a legal duty to process personal information for the purposes of:

• employing staff
• responding to subject access requests
• responding to Freedom of Information (FOI) requests.

National data opt-out

The national data opt-out is a service that allows patients to opt-out of their confidential patient information being used for research and planning. Find out more or to register your choice to opt-out.

Individuals’ rights

Data protection laws give each individual specific rights in respect of the personal information that we hold about you. You have the right to:

• be informed why, where and how we use your information
• ask to access or for a copy of the information we hold about you
• ask for your information to be corrected if it is inaccurate or incomplete
• ask for your information to be deleted or removed where there is no need for us to continue processing it
• ask us to restrict the use of your information
• ask us to copy or transfer your information from one IT system to another in a safe and secure way, without impacting the quality of the information
• object to how your information is used
• challenge any decisions made without human intervention (automated decision making).

Find out more or contact us

• Further information and our full Privacy notice.

If you have any questions about the uses of your information, wish to exercise one or more of your rights or complain about our use of your information please contact our Data Protection Officer at kentchft.dataprotectionofficer@nhs.net.

If you are unhappy with the outcome of your enquiry, you can contact the regulator The Information Commissioners Office (ICO).

Write to: 

The Information Commissioner
ICO
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Phone: 01625 545700