Patient and personal information
Information we record about you
The London Ambulance Service
NHS Trust provides an ambulance, urgent care and patient transport
service throughout Greater London.
When you contact us as a
patient, we collect information about you and keep records about
the service we provide. We may also record information about you if
you contact us for any other reason. This guidance explains the
type of information we record about you, why this is necessary, and
the ways in which this information may be used by the Service.
What type of information will
we record about you?
We log details
electronically when we receive a call for help or a booking for
patient transport services that we operate.
If one of our ambulances
attends you, or you are transferred between hospitals by ambulance,
we will collect information about you to help us identify and treat
you. This will be written on a patient clinical record along with
details of your symptoms and condition, a
nd any treatment we give
you. We are also required to record details of your ethnicity and
other information to help us monitor the equality of the
services we provide.
To provide you with a
patient transport service, we will record details about where you
live, where we will be taking you and some details about your
circumstances for administration purposes.
If you make a complaint or
an enquiry about the service we have provided, or have contact with
us on another matter, we will keep a record of all the relevant
details in a file for reference purposes. In some cases, we may
need to obtain information from the hospital we have taken you to
in order to investigate a complaint or deal with an enquiry.
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What happens to your clinical
records?
If an ambulance takes you to
hospital, we will give the hospital staff a copy of the written
patient clinical record so that they have details of your condition
and the treatment we have provided.
Other health and social care
professionals involved in your treatment or care may ask us for
information about your use of our services or the treatment you
received. Provided we are satisfied that they do need this
information for your care, or you have given permission, we will
provide this to them.
In some circumstances,
particularly if we do not take you to hospital, we may share
information or clinical records with other healthcare
professionals. Most commonly, this will be to your GP, but we may
also pass your details to other specialist healthcare teams which
might include people from other organisations, such as social
services or education, to assess whether they can offer you support
that may help to prevent a similar situation arising again.
We are sometimes also asked
by the primary care trusts/ GP consortia that fund our services to
provide information about incidents attended so they can identify
and provide more appropriate care pathways for patients.
Where another NHS
organisation is funding a patient transport service journey, we
have to confirm this information - although we will provide only
the details that are needed.
Records of the treatment and
service we provide are retained securely for reference and will
allow us to monitor how well we are providing our service.
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How else is information about you used?
Helping us to train our staff and
monitor their work
Emergency ambulance staff
may need to copy patient clinical records they have completed for
their training, but they will blank out information which could
identify you before they do this.
Monitoring the standard of care we
provide and undertaking research
Anonymised information from
patient clinical records is used for internal audit purposes and
details of the emergency treatment and care we provide is sometimes
used for research. We make sure ethical approval has been obtained
in accordance with NHS guidelines before we release any information
outside the organisation for research purposes and do not release
information that could identify patients unless it is absolutely
necessary.
Monitoring the standard of care
provided within the NHS overall
We pass information to other
NHS organisations as part of national initiatives to monitor the
standard of care provided within the NHS as a whole. In all cases,
we supply only the details that are needed for these purposes and,
wherever possible, the information will be anonymised.
Analysis of incidents
We provide details of
incidents attended by the London Ambulance Service to the Greater
London Authority London Analysts Support Service which is used for
the analysis and reduction of crime, but this is always anonymised
and no patients or other individuals can be identified from this
information.
Disclosure to third parties
We will not disclose your
information to third parties (for instance outside the NHS) without
your permission unless there are exceptional circumstances, such as
when it is justified in the public interest; for example:
- when a
serious crime has been committed;
- when there
are serious risks to the public or NHS staff; or
- to protect
children or vulnerable adults who are not able to decide for
themselves whether their information should be shared.
or where the law requires
information to be passed on; for example-
- Where a formal court order
has been issued.
When we pass on any
information we will ensure that the recipient is aware that it must
be kept confidential and secure.
Complaints and enquiries
Files relating to complaints
or enquiries we receive will only be seen by the staff who are
dealing with the matter. We will only pass this to another
organisation or body if you ask us to do this, for example, if you
request that our response to your complaint is reviewed by a
separate regulating body.
We may sometimes be asked
for information about the service we have provided you with by
other organisations investigating a complaint or enquiry you have
made to them, or if you are pursuing a legal claim against
them.
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How do you know your records will be
kept confidential?
All NHS organisations have a
legal duty of confidence to their patients and the Data Protection
Act 1998 further defines how we can collect and handle personal
information. The NHS also has an additional set of guidelines,
known as the Caldicott principles, which apply to the use of
patient information. All NHS organisations are required to appoint
a Caldicott Guardian to ensure patient information is handled in
accordance with legal and NHS regulations.
We will seek your consent
before we release information that identifies you to any third
party for any other reason than those set out in this guidance. We
will not pass information that identifies you to another person or
organisation (including friends or relatives) without your
knowledge or permission unless we have an overriding legal duty to
do so.
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How long do we keep your
records?
We retain medical records
and details of 999 calls for 25 years. Other records that may
contain information about you are kept for varying lengths of time,
up to ten years.
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Your rights over your
information
You have a right to see all
personal or clinical information we hold about you. However, please
be aware that we are entitled to make a small charge to cover our
costs.
If you believe any of the
information we hold about you may not be accurate, or if you have
any concerns about us collecting and using information about you as
outlined here, you should contact our Patient Experiences
Department as detailed below.
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How to obtain your personal information or request further
details about the use of your information
The Data Protection Act 1998
allows you to find out what information about you is held by the
London Ambulance Service. This is known as “right of subject
access”. It applies to your health records and all other personal
information relating to you held by the Service.
If you want to make a
subject access request for personal data held in respect of any
services provided by the Trust you should make a written request
(fax, email or letter) to:
Patient Experiences
Department
London Ambulance Service NHS Trust
St Andrews House
St Andrews Way
London E3 3PA
Tel: 020 3069 0240
Fax: 020 3069 0239
Email: ped@londonambulance.nhs.uk
enclosing payment of a fee
of £10.00 made payable to London Ambulance Service NHS Trust.
The
NHS Care Record Guarantee provides further detail, including 12
commitments to the handling, sharing, and use of your information,
and you mayobtain more detailed advice about the use of personal
information from the Patient Experiences Department as detailed
above.
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