Easy Read Privacy Notice 

Southampton Sea City Partnership is an organisation that runs services at St Marys Surgery, Telephone House Surgery, Victor Street Surgery and Mulberry Surgery. This page explains why we collect information about you, how we keep it safe and private, and how we may use that information.

Why do we collect information about you?

Doctors, nurses and other healthcare staff have to keep a record about your health and any advice or treatment that we give you. This information is kept in your “GP record”, and helps us to provide care for you.  It helps us to know what health problems and treatments you have had in the past, what worked well for you and also to record our discussions and plans for your care in future.  Your GP record is only used to help doctors, nurses and other members of the team to keep you well and to support you to get better when you are feeling unwell.

What do we record?

We keep a record of every time that you see someone at the surgery, as well as times that you have been seen somewhere else, such as in the Accident and Emergency department of a hospital.

We keep a record of:

• Your name, address, and info about those looking after you (such as a mum, a dad, or a carer)
• Your home telephone and mobile number (if you have one), and your email address if you want us to
• Details about the time and date of any appointments, calls or other communications about your care 
• The reasons why you have contacted us – what you need help with and your symptoms.
• Your choices and preferences about your healthcare 
• Plans that you have agreed with your doctor, nurse or other member of the team about your care 
• The results of any tests that you have had (such as x-rays or blood tests) 
• Letters from other specialist services (for example hospital doctors) about your health or care 

How we keep your information safe and private?

There are laws that we must follow that protect you and the information that we hold about you in your GP record. We must make sure that we use and store information about you carefully. Your GP record is kept on a very secure computer system. Only doctors, nurses and other relevant members of our team that we give permission to can look at your information. No one else. Everyone in our team that can see your records has training about the importance of managing your information carefully and not sharing it unless with other members of the healthcare team involved in your care. The system has lots of protection and can only be accessed by people with confidential passwords and an NHS smart card.  

Communicating with you 

You can tell us the best way for us to contact you. If you have a mobile phone, or an email address, then we can use that to contact you. This could be to remind you when you have an appointment.  If you don’t want us to text you anything at all, then just tell us and we will make sure that doesn’t happen.  

Sharing your information with a parent, a guardian or a carer

The information in your health record is called health data. This is important data about you. It must be kept safe, so only the right people can see it. There are laws to protect your data. Children have the same rights as adults – you own your data. Until you are 16, your parents or guardians have the right to manage this for you.  We can give all of our patients on-line access to their GP records.  When you are old enough to understand what online access is, and who you want to have access, the doctors should ask you before they share your data with anyone else – including your parent or guardian. This is called getting consent.

Until a person is 11 years old,  their parent, guardian or carer will usually take responsibility for their healthcare, talking with our clinical team and they will have access to their GP record. From when a person is 11 until when they are 16, their doctor may talk to them about who has access to their GP record and whether they are old enough to understand this and make decisions about their own care on your own. When they can understand it enough to make an informed decisions, they are said to "have capacity".  At this point, and provided they have capacity, they can ask that we “turn off” their parent or guardian access their GP records and make their own decisions about their healthcare. 

You do not have to be old enough to look after your health and care on your own. You can still make an informed decision about whether you want your parents or guardians to manage your health and care for you online.  Most young people under 16 want their parent or guardian to support them with their health and care, and online access to your GP record helps them do this.  

When a person is 16 years old, they are treated the same as an adult, and parent and guardian access is stopped automatically. When they are 16 or older, we must always get their consent first before sharing their data. They can ask your GP surgery if they want their parents or guardians to have access to their GP record but they do not have the right to have this in the same way they do when they are a younger child.

If you are an adult and you need support, you can give another adult who cares for you access to your GP record so that they can support you with your health and care. If you want to do this you will need to provide consent and your carer will need to provide ID so we know who they are.  

Sharing your information with other organisations 

Sometimes we might share information about you from your GP record with doctors and other relevant staff working in other services – for example hospitals. This is so that we can work together in a joined-up way to provide better care for you. The doctors and nurses in hospital can see information about you in your GP record – but only when they need to do this to support your care and with either your or your parent or guardian’s consent. We also share information about you or the care we are providing for you with pharmacies,  so that they know what prescription to give you. Whenever we share information like this with other organisations involved in your care it is usually through secure and encrypted links between our IT systems.  

Sometimes we share information about all of our patients with people that plan healthcare services. When we do this we don’t share personal details (like your name or address). There is no way of the people we share this information with knowing it is your information. It is though helpful that we do this so that we can work together to deliver better services for our communities. 

Sometimes we do need to share information about you when it is to keep you safe.   We have a legal duty to protect children and vulnerable adults.  When we think a child or vulnerable adult is at risk of harm, we sometimes need to share this information with other services – like the police or social services – so that we can work together to protect the person from harm.  Sometimes we have to tell other people if we are worried that you, or someone else in your family, could be in danger.  Whenever we can, we would always tell you if we were going to share information about you with other people or organisations. 

Any Questions?

If you have any questions, then please contact us