Privacy Notice
Essex Menopause Clinic
Information About Essex Private Doctors Ltd
Please see the Copyright notice at the end of this document.
Principal activities: Healthcare Services as defined below
Company Name Essex Private Doctors Ltd
Place of registration: England and Wales
Companies House Number: 14365804
Registered office address: 57 Crown Street, Brentwood, Essex, CM14 4BD
About our Privacy Notice
Essex Private Doctors Ltd is committed to protecting your privacy and legal rights when dealing with your personal information. This Privacy Notice intends to provide clear and understandable details about the information we collect about you (or anyone you have provided us with information about, e.g., your child), how we use and protect it. It also provides information about your rights that relate to the data we process.
If you have any queries about this Privacy Notice, if you are not sure what something means, or if you wish to contact us about personal information we hold, please email us at: [email protected].
Essex Private Doctors Ltd is registered with the Information Commissioners Office, registration number ZB481195 under the Dr Alice Scott, the Data Controller.
You have the right to object to processing of your data, if processing of your data is based on legitimate interests, or if processing is being used for direct marketing. The definition of ‘legitimate interests’ is discussed within this Privacy Notice. Please contact us in the first instance if you wish to object.
‘We’, our’, ‘us’, ‘Company’ is a direct reference to Essex Private Doctors Ltd.
‘Services’ means healthcare-related services provided by us, as defined in ‘Scope of Healthcare Services’.
UK-GDPR means the United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulations that came into force on 1st January 2021, and are tailored by the UK Data Protection Act 2018.
ICO means the Information Commissioner’s Office and will also refer to any successor to it as the UK data protection authority.
Data Protection Laws means the Act, UK UK-GDPR, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, the Telecommunications (Lawful Business Practice) (Interception of Communications) Regulations 2000 (SI 2000/2699), the Electronic Communications Data Protection Directive (2002/58/EC), the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 (SI 2426/2003) and all applicable laws and regulations relating to the processing of personal data and privacy, including where applicable the guidance and codes of practice issued by the ICO or any other supervisory authority, and the equivalent of any of the foregoing in any relevant jurisdiction.
Data Controller, Data Processor, Data Subject and Personal Data all have the meaning givento them in the Act and GDPR.
Website or site means the Company’s website at https://www.essexprivatedoctors.com/
‘Patient’ or ‘patients’ means people who attend our clinic or intend to use our services.
‘Patient or patient’s data’ means either Personal Data or Special Category data, as defined by the GDPR.
‘Personal information’ means either Personal Data or Special Category data, as defined by the GDPR.
This Privacy Notice will apply to any person (also known as a ‘data subject’) who enquires about, uses or purchases our services. Please see the section ‘Scope of Healthcare Services’ for more information.
It also applies if you communicate with us in any manner, for the purpose of discussing current or past use of our services.
You may be reading a printed version of our Privacy Notice, which may not be the latest version. Please view the current privacy notice on our website, or contact us using the contact details at the beginning of this Privacy Notice to request a copy of the Privacy Notice via email, in Adobe PDF format.
Essex Private Doctors Ltd provides the following healthcare services:
- Private Medical Care
Data protection laws require us to take appropriate technical and organisational measures to prevent unlawful access or processing of personal information, that the Data Controller for Essex Private Doctors Ltd are responsible for implementing.
The level of technical safeguarding of data should be appropriate to the nature of information in question, and the harm that might result from its improper use, or from its accidental deletion or destruction.
The following list shows some of the technical and organisational measures we put in place to ensure the safety and integrity of your data.
- Our clinicians and administrative staff are trained in the appropriate handing of personal information and how to respond to a data breach.
- We practice common-sense cybersecurity requirements, such as locking screens when away from them, ensuring Windows / Mac OS updates are installed on release.
- Where possible, we use two factor authentication for key systems.
- We ensure passwords are changed regularly on our systems.
- We don’t use systems aimed purely at consumers, such as Gmail personal, Dropbox personal and Hotmail.
- We ensure we encrypt all our hardware that will store personal information, using industry standard encryption methods.
- We use Egress Switch, which is an industry leading email encryption technology, to communicate with you and other clinicians directly involved in your healthcare.
- This technology enables us to manage any potential data breaches in a fast and efficient manner.
- We also use Semble ( https://www.semble.io/ ), which contains a secure messaging platform to communicate with you, as well as securely storing your medical notes and records that we take when you are a patient of ours.
- Our third-party providers of systems used to process your personal data are compliant with Data Protection laws and requirements, and we also have effective data restore capabilities to ensure your data can be recovered.
We collect personal information from you or any third parties that are acting on your behalf.
If you provide us with personal information about other people, please ensure that they have seen this Privacy Notice and understand it, before you provide this information to us.
- We will collect Standard and Special Category personal information from you, or other third parties. We will collect the information from the following sources:
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- Your parent or guardian, if you are under 18 years of age;
- A family member, or someone else acting on your behalf;
- Your interpreter, acting on your behalf;
- From yourself, either in face-to-face consultations, or via electronic; communications such as email, via the telephone, or via postal communications;
- When you have given explicit consent to subscribe to educational or marketing email correspondence;
- Manually, when you fill in referral, assessment, registration and other forms;
- Via postal communications, via electronic or postal communications, or records completed by clinicians involved in your care, and their administrators;
- When given directly by social services, carers, relatives and friends – over the phone or in person;
- From providers of medical imaging and diagnostic testing involved in your care;
- From your private medical insurance provider or referring Embassy;
- In emergency situations by the social services, police or ambulance service staff.
Standard personal information which can include (but not limited to):
- Name
- Address(es)
- Email address(es)
- Telephone number(s)
- Occupation
- Date of birth
- Next of kin or similar contact details
- Details of any complaints or grievances raised that relate to the provision of our services
- Financial details that relate to payments for our services (note we do not store card details)
- Account details relating to your private medical insurance provider.
Special Category personal information This is personal information specifically relating to your:
- Race
- Ethnic origin
- Religion
- Genetics
- Health, both physical and mental
- Sex life
- Sexual orientation
Special Category personal information relating to health can include (but is not limited to) clinical notes, examination findings, medical imaging data related to your care, diagnostic test results, correspondence and communications from other clinical professionals which relates to your current or past clinical care.
We will process your personal information for reasons set out in this Privacy Notice. By law, we need to have a lawful basis or bases for processing your Standard personal information and a lawful basis or bases for processing your Special Category personal information. Additionally, for Special Category personal information, we are required to identify a condition or conditions for processing this data (as well as a lawful basis or bases).
These two types of personal information are discussed above in the section “Categories of personal information that we process”
Standard personal information
We process Standard personal information about you if it is determined:
- It is in our Legitimate Interests. Details of what constitutes Legitimate Interests are detailed below.
- It is our Legal Obligation – this means we are required to process your Standard personal information in order for us to comply with the law. Details of the Legal Obligation are detailed below.
- We have your Explicit Consent – this only applies when you’ve subscribed and opted in to receive our email newsletters, blogs and marketing offers, or you’ve provided consent to receive email newsletters, blog and marketing offers via our marketing consent form via an opt in checkbox.
Standard personal information – Legitimate Interests
The law requires us to our balance the processing of your Standard personal information against your interests, rights and freedoms. We conduct a legitimate interests assessment (LIA) to ensure that the Standard personal information we process does not override your interests, rights or freedom that relate to your information.
The Legitimate Interests we have identified that allow us to process your Standard personal information are:
- To enable us to take sufficient information in order to record who you are when booking appointments;
- To ensure we can email you with basic information about your appointments;
- To manage our personal relationship with you, with respect to discussing invoices, requesting insurer authorisation codes;
- To communicate with you if we need to cancel or rearrange appointments.
If you book into our clinic as a potential patient and we hold no previous clinical records that relate to your direct care, and then you cancel the booking, we will no longer have a legitimate interest in processing your data. In most instances, we would delete any personal information that was used to make the booking.
Please note, that if you are a patient currently undergoing treatment or have appointments booked, we will use your email address to inform you of any changes that relate to our clinic. Examples include changes to fees and change of clinic address.
Even if you ask us to not send you marketing or educational emails, we will still use your email address to communicate with you regarding this clinic related information.
Standard personal information – Legal Obligation
We process Standard personal information to fulfil our Legal Obligation, which requires us to maintain complete records relating to the healthcare services we supply to you. The records that we maintain require that we process a subset of your Standard personal information, with the lawful basis being a Legal Obligation. The Standard personal information we will then process under a Legal Obligation is your:
- Full name
- Address
- Date of birth
- Gender
- Contact details (such as an email address or telephone number)
- Your parent(s) or legal guardian details if you are a minor.
Please note, that whilst we initially use Legitimate Interests as a lawful basis for processing your data, once you attend clinic and we take any notes relating to your clinical care, we will then process your Standard personal information on the lawful basis of our Legal Obligation.
Special Category personal information
As we are a provider of healthcare services to you, we have several reasons for processing your Special Category personal information. We would not be able to provide healthcare services to you unless we can process this information.
We undertake to process this information in line with Data Protection Laws as defined in the section “Definitions of terms within this Privacy Notice” within this document.
We process Special Category personal information about you if it is determined:
It is our Legal Obligation – this means we are required to process your Standard personal information in order for us to comply with the law. Details of the Legal Obligation are detailed below. We also are required to define an additional condition or conditions to process your Special Category personal information.
The conditions under which we need to process your Special Category personal information are:
- Processing is necessary for the purposes of preventive or occupational medicine, for medical diagnosis or the provision of healthcare or treatment, including for the purposes of preventive or occupational medicine, on the basis of Union or Member State law or pursuant to contract with a healthcare professional;
- Processing is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims (for example, to process a legal claim against us, including your personal information provided to our regulatory body if lawfully requested).
Special Category information – provision of healthcare or treatment on the basis of UK law
People directly involved in your healthcare that are designated as being regulated by the regulatory bodies as listed in the Medical Act 1983 or the Health Professionals Order 2001 are legally required to record information about you, that relate to preventive or occupational medicine, for medical diagnosis or the provision of healthcare or treatment.
We are required to demonstrate we follow the legal requirements as listed in:
The Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014
Which include:
PART 3, Section 2, Regulation 17 ©
Which state:
(c) maintain securely an accurate, complete and contemporaneous record in respect of each service user, including a record of the care and treatment provided to the service user and of decisions taken in relation to the care and treatment provided;
(f) evaluate and improve their practice in respect of the processing of the information referred to in sub-paragraphs (a) to (e).
Note, you as the patient are the “service user”.
We are also required by our Regulatory body, the General Medical Council (GMC), to take and process medical records, which are required to support safe and effective care.
As our regulatory body is covered by UK law, this also demonstrates a legal requirement to record and maintain clinical records that relate to your clinical care.
- Doctors, surgeons, clinicians and other health-care professionals, hospitals, clinics and other healthcare providers;
- Their administrative staff such as secretaries;
- People or organisations that we are required by law or our regulatory body to share your personal information with;
- The police or other law enforcement agencies, where we are either required by law or a court order;
- A parent or legal guardian if you are a minor;
- Any person that you have authorised us to share information with
Generally, we store your personal information on secure systems that reside within the EEA. Where we store on systems that are outside of the EEA, we will ensure that there are suitable contractual or other safeguards in place to protect your data.
These measures may include data controller (us) to data processor contracts who we have checked have the required data protection law compliance, or ensuring your data is transmitted from the EEA to other global areas in a highly encrypted format, that is then stored on secure systems using “zero knowledge” encryption. This means your data cannot be decrypted by a data processor.
As we are processing your personal data for provision of Healthcare Services, we have a legal obligation to process this data.
There are also industry standard guidelines for retention of records (set by the UK National Health Service) that we follow, in accordance with our regulatory body requirement and the British Medical Association guidelines.
In accordance with these guidelines, as we will be storing regular General Practice healthcare records, we will process or store your personal information for your lifetime and for ten (10) years after death, but this can increase if there are specific circumstances. If you have any queries about how long we are processing your data for, please contact us.
We will also store information to ensure we can deal with any legal claims that arise from you using our services, and the data will be stored for as long as is required and advised by our legal counsel.
Your rights on us processing your personal information versus us storing your personal information are discussed in the section ‘Your rights’, below.
Any personal information that is used for marketing purposes, that has been provided using consent, will be erased in accordance with your rights if requested.
You have the following rights, however please note, that the rights are not absolute. The only absolute right you have is to request that we do not use your personal information for direct marketing.
Please do contact us if you are unsure about your rights as detailed below. We will always endeavour to help explain how your rights apply to the personal information we process, for our specified lawful reasons.
The right to be informed
We need to inform you the name and contact details of our organisation, which is at the top of this document.
You have the right to be informed about how we collect and use your personal data. We are obliged to provide this right to be informed in a clear and concise manner.
This Privacy Notice you are reading is designed to inform you how we collect and use your personal data.
The right of access
You have the right to confirmation that your data is being processed and to view this information. This is known as a Subject Access Request or ‘SAR’, but you do not have to specify this term when requesting your personal information from us. You also have the right to request a copy of your personal data that we process.
We will need to identify you using reasonable means before we will start the process of collating your personal information.
Once we have identified you, we will reply to any requests for your personal information (SARs) within 30 days, unless we deem the request to be complex, or repetitive, where we will notify you that we may take an additional two months to provide your personal information.
We will not charge you to request information from us. However, we will charge a reasonable fee if the request for information is repetitive. If we’ve provided information to you and you wish to request it again, we ask that you contact us beforehand to discuss what our reasonable fee is.
If the request is manifestly unfounded or excessive, particular because if the request becomes repetitive, we might decide to:
- charge a reasonable fee taking into account the administrative costs of providing the information; or
- refuse to respond.
Where we refuse to respond to a request, we will explain why to you, informing you of your right to complain to the ICO without undue delay and at the latest within one month of our refusal.
The right to rectification
You have the right to request rectification of your personal information. However, we only consider requests to correct factual information. Any clinical opinions will remain valid as they were the opinion at the time of being recorded. If it is later determined that a clinical opinion or diagnosis was then found to have changed, we will update your personal information to reflect this, but we will not change or remove the original clinical opinion.
The right to erasure
You have the right to request erasure of personal information.
If you have subscribed to any of our email educational or marketing correspondence, you have the right to request erasure from our email list, or you can click on the ‘unsubscribe’ link that appears in all emails we send. We will only use your personal information to send you marketing or educational material if you have given us your explicit permission.
We will consider all requests in conjunction with our legal obligation to retain information relating to your healthcare provided by us, as well as data protection law which clearly states when the right to erasure does not apply. Normally, this means we will not erase any information.
If we determine we cannot delete data, you still have the right to ask us to restrict processing of your personal data.
The right to restrict processing
You can request that we restrict processing of personal information. This means that we will stop actively processing it, and it will just be stored. Stopping processing will mean that we will not add any additional information to your existing information.
The right to data portability
As we do not process personal information using a lawful basis of either a) consent or b) for the performance of a contract, the right to data portability is not applicable. You still have the right to request this, however.
The right to object
You have the right to object if processing is not based on legitimate interests, or if processing is being used for direct marketing.
Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling
We do not make any kinds of automated decisions or perform any profiling with your personal information.
The right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority
We ask that you first contact us if you feel you wish to make a complaint. Please see the template letter and guidelines listed on the ICO website.
https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/raising-concerns/
You can also contact the ICO directly:
They can also be contacted at the following address:
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
SK9 5AF
This Privacy Notice has been created for Essex Private Doctors Ltd by Private Practice Ninja Ltd.
Essex Private Doctors Ltd has the right to edit the text contained within this notice as they require, so long as it remains solely for its use.
Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited, including by Essex Private Doctors Ltd, to whom limited use of this Privacy Notice is licensed to.
Essex Private Doctors Ltd may however publish a copy on one website – currently https://www.essexprivatedoctors.com/
Essex Private Doctors Ltd must notify Private Practice Ninja Ltd if it wishes to use the Privacy Notice for a different company, or for more than one website, so that re-licencing fees can be discussed.
Essex Private Doctors Ltd may not, except with our express written permission, distribute or commercially exploit the content. Nor may it transmit it or store it in any other website or other form of electronic retrieval system.
All rights reserved.