Privacy Policy

MANAGING YOUR INFORMATION AT GORT FAMILY PRACTICE

– In order to provide for your care here we need to collect and keep information about you and your health on our records.
– We retain your information securely on our servers.
– We will only ask for and keep information that is necessary.
– We will attempt to keep it as accurate and up-to-date as possible.
– We will explain the need for any information we ask for if you are not sure why it is needed.
– We ask you to inform us about any relevant changes that we should know about. This would include such things as any new treatments or investigations being carried out that we are not aware of. Please also inform us of change of address and phone numbers.
– All persons in the practice (not already covered by a professional confidentiality code) sign a confidentiality agreement that explicitly makes clear their duties in relation to personal health information and the consequences of breaching that duty.
– Access to patient records is regulated to ensure that they are used only to the extent necessary to enable the secretary or manager to perform their tasks for the proper functioning of the practice. In this regard, patients should understand that practice staff may have access to their records for:

Identifying and printing repeat prescriptions for patients. These are then checked and signed by the GP.
Generating a social welfare certificate for the patient. This is then checked and signed by the GP.
Typing referral letters to hospital consultants or allied health professionals such as physiotherapists, occupational therapists, psychologists and dietitians.
Opening letters from hospitals and consultants. The letters could be appended to a patient’s paper file or scanned into their electronic patient record.
Scanning clinical letters, radiology reports and any other documents not available in electronic format.
Downloading laboratory results and Out of Hours Coop reports and performing integration of these results into electronic patient record.
Photocopying or printing documents for referral to consultants, attending an antenatal clinic or when patient is changing GP.
Checking for a patient if a hospital or consultant letter is back or if a laboratory or radiology result is back, in order to schedule a conversation with the GP.
When a patient makes contact with a practice, checking if they are due for any preventative services such as vaccination, ante natal visit, contraceptive pill check, cervical smear test, etc.
Handling, printing, photocopying and postage of medico legal and life assurance reports, and of associated documents.

DISCLOSURE OF INFORMATION TO OTHER HEALTH AND SOCIAL PROFESSIONALS

We may need to pass some of this information to other health and social care professionals in order to provide you with the treatment and services you need. Only the relevant part of your record will be released. These other professionals are also legally bound to treat your information with the same duty of care and confidence that we do.

DISCLOSURES REQUIRED OR PERMITTED UNDER LAW

The law provides that in certain instances personal information (including health information) can be disclosed, for example, in the case of infectious diseases.

DISCLOSURE OF INFORMATION TO EMPLOYERS, INSURANCE COMPANIES AND SOLICITORS

In general, work related Medical Certificates from your GP will only provide a confirmation that you are unfit for work with an indication of when you will be fit to resume work. Where it is considered necessary to provide additional information, we will discuss that with you. However, Social Welfare Certificates of Incapacity for work must include the medical reason you are unfit to work. In the case of disclosures to insurance companies or requests made by solicitors for your records, we will only release the information with your signed consent.

USE OF INFORMATION FOR TRAINING, TEACHING AND QUALITY ASSURANCE

It is usual for GPs to discuss patient case histories as part of their continuing medical education or for the purpose of training GPs and/or medical students. In these situations, the identity of the patient concerned will not be revealed. In other situations, however, it may be beneficial for other doctors in the practice to be aware of patients with particular conditions, and in such cases, this practice would only communicate the information necessary to provide the highest level of care to the patient. Our Practice is involved in the training of GPs and is attached to the Western Vocational Training Programme. As part of this programme, GP Registrars will work in the Practice and may be involved in your care.

USE OF INFORMATION FOR RESEARCH, AUDIT AND QUALITY ASSURANCE

It is usual for patient information to be used for these purposes in order to improve services and standards of practice. In fact GPs on the specialist GP register of the Medical Council are now required to perform audits. In general, information used for such purposes is done in an anonymous manner with all personal identifying information removed. If it were proposed to use your information in a way where it would not be anonymous or the Practice was involved in external research, we would discuss this further with you before we proceeded and seek your written informed consent. Please remember that the quality of the patient service provided can only be maintained and improved by training, teaching, audit and research.

YOUR RIGHT OF ACCESS TO YOUR HEALTH INFORMATION

You have the right of access to all the personal information held about you by this practice. If you wish to see your records, in most cases, it is the quickest to discuss this with your doctor who will outline the information in the record with you. You can make a formal written access request to the Practice and the matter can be dealt with formally.

TRANSFERRING TO ANOTHER PRACTICE

If you decide at any time and for whatever reason to transfer to another Practice, we will facilitate that decision by making available to your new doctor a copy of your records, on receipt of your signed consent from your new doctor. For medico-legal reasons we will also retain a copy of your records in this Practice for an appropriate time which may exceed eight years.

This privacy policy outlines how Gort Family Practice collects, stores and uses the personal information that website visitors voluntarily provide. We are fully committed to the privacy of our users and this page is intended to give a clear explanation of our data processing practises.

GDPR compliance
Gort Family Practice is compliant with the European General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) 2018 regarding the collection and storage of personal data. The data gathered on this website is intended only for the reasons outlined below. Protection of personal data is very important to us and we make every effort to keep all website data safe using secure servers and regularly updated encryption technologies to prevent unauthorised access to our data.

Contact information
We collect the personal data that website visitors voluntarily submit, like when you fill out a website form. This includes your details such as your name, email, phone number, date of birth and IP address.

Device information
We collect information about the device you use while connecting to the Gort Family Practice website. This information may include your operating system, hardware version, device settings, screen size, browser type, ISP, language, time zone, GPS location and IP address.

Third party information
We receive information about you and your activities from social media and/or from certain service providers.

Where is your data stored?
Protecting your personal data is extremely important to us; all data is safely stored on our secure servers.

How long is your data stored for?
Gort Family Practice will adhere to Article 5 (e) of the GDPR which states personal data shall be kept for no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which it is being processed.

Personal data
Personal data that we gather, like names and email addresses, is used for marketing purposes to help Gort Family Practice communicate with our visitors and to inform them about services that may benefit them and their organisations in the future. We will never collect any personal information about you without your knowledge, so the decision whether or not to share your personal information is entirely up to you. We only use this information to better understand how visitors interact with the content and functionality on the Gort Family Practice website. The information also helps us understand which content and functionality we need to either improve or remove in order to provide you with the best possible user experience.

Keeping you safe
We use information we have gathered to help verify certain activity and to investigate any suspicious activity or any violations of our terms and policies.

Cookies
Cookies are small files which are stored on a user’s computer. Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to continuously improve our website performance and provide you with a better user experience when you browse our website.

How we use cookies
Gort Family Practice uses cookies to track visitor activity on our web pages. We also use cookies to store form information. The information we store and retrieve from cookies help us to provide a better experience for our users and also help make our website more secure.

Third party cookies
Our website may contain links to other sites which are outside our control and not covered by this policy. Gort Family Practice use functionality provided by google and facebook to help track the effectiveness of our website and advertisements. To see how these providers use cookies, please see their privacy policy or terms of service pages.

Disclosure
We will never disclose your personal information to anyone outside Gort Family Practice except where we have your consent, or where we are required or permitted to do so by law, or to other companies who provide a service to us. However, the transmission of personal data via the internet is not entirely secure. Although we will make every effort to keep your personal data safe and in accordance with this privacy policy, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. We reserve the right to change this policy at any time. Any changes to this policy will be posted here.