Disclaimer
Privacy and Data
Our full privacy notice is available here. However, in short, we may process “personal data” (as defined in data protection legislation) as part of our contracted services and/or in our administration, this may be data relating to company business, and/or relating to the clients, although data may be accessed remotely. All data are held securely and for as long as they relate to the reasons for collection and/or if there is a statutory retention period.
As of March 2023, Welsh ministers have directed Local Health Boards to request GP surgeries to make information available to Digital Health and Care Wales (DHCW) for the purpose of identifying priority groups, to send invitations and to book appointments for vaccination, and to manage and monitor immunisations via the Welsh Immunisation System for the Covid vaccination programme. Full details are in this privacy notice.
In addition, NHS Wales have produced the Your Privacy, Your Rights document which will explain why NHS Wales collects information about you and how it may be used.
Cookies are Internet files used by the system to view websites and their content, and there will be a small banner at the bottom of our website homepage which informs you about Cookies. You are at liberty to turn off cookies through this banner or through your browser but you should be aware that this might affect your viewing experience. For more information please see our Cookies - Privacy Information policy.
None of the above affects your rights under the legislation, in particular your right to access the data we hold on you. If you wish to request a copy of your data, please submit it in writing/email to The Business Manager. You may request a copy of the personal information we may hold on you – this should be submitted in writing or email (details on the website). Please include enough information to enable us to identify you and search for appropriate data.
If you are dissatisfied with this policy, have queries about our data protection procedures or wish to lodge a complaint, please contact The Practice Manager in the first instance. Thereafter you have the right to submit a complaint to the Supervisory Authority, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO):
The Information Commissioner’s Office Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow Cheshire SK9 5AF.
All telephone calls are recorded for training and quality purposes.
We hope that you find this website useful and your comments are very important to us. We would welcome any suggestions on improving our website. However, due to time constraints, it is not anticipated that we will be checking and responding to any e-mail on a regular basis. If you contact us via this web site, there may be a long delay before you receive a response.
You are advised to discuss any of the information given at this site with your own Doctor beforehand. We cannot accept responsibility for any errors. It is your responsibility to decide whether to act upon the information given at this web site. The information given is intended ONLY for patients living within our practice area and registered with us. If you do not live within our practice area and are not registered with us, please do not proceed further. The authors of this website will not accept responsibility for any consequences arising from the advice given within this website. Although we have taken great care in preparing this web site, we would like to advise you that any material obtained from the Internet may not have been verified and could even be harmful. Please consult your Doctor if you have any medical problems or concerns. The information contained on this site is general information which is not in any way intended to replace the specific advice that patients may obtain from their own doctor about individual care.
This site does not contain any confidential material, patient details or clinical records. It is not possible to access confidential information, patient details or clinical records via this web site. Please do not send any confidential or private information to us via this web site or via the Internet. The hardware used to maintain this site is totally separate and not connected in any way to our clinical systems. Unfortunately, we are unable to respond to e-mail of a personal nature. Please do not send any personal questions for Doctors.
Freedom of Information Act 2000
As a Practice we are obliged to comply with this act from the 31st October 2003. The act requires every public authority to adopt and maintain a “Publication Scheme” which has been approved by the Commissioner. The Commissioner is the independent supervisory authority appointed by parliament to oversee compliance with both the Freedom of Information Act and the Data Protection Act. The scheme is a guide to the types of information a public authority undertakes to make available to the public as a matter of routine. Our publication is available from the Practice Manager on request.
Twitter
We are using Twitter as a means of keeping our patients up to date and informing them of any information that we think may be useful to them. As with this website, we have received no additional funding (or personnel!) to do this, nor are we under any contractual obligation to provide a "Twitter" service to our patients. We would like to emphasise the following points:
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Please do not send any personal messages or messages to individual Doctors to us via Twitter
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We regret that we do not (and cannot) check any messages sent to us via Twitter on a regular basis.
We are not able to respond to individual requests for information sent to us via Twitter. If you have an urgent medical or administrative issue, please contact the surgery by phone in the usual manner, not via Twitter. Whilst we will take note of messages sent to us via Twitter (indeed, these can be very useful) we cannot respond on an individual basis. Senders of offensive, personal, derogatory or critical tweets will be blocked. This is not because we are not open to criticism, but we feel that an open forum with restricted text is not the place to discuss. If you have any criticisms of our service, please contact our practice manager by phone or letter and we will be pleased to deal with the matter.
We do not intend to re-tweet commercial or profit generating tweets. We will re-tweet information from reputable and charitable sources if we feel that the information will be of value to our patients, medicine and the community at large.
Who sends tweets?
The practice manager, some admin staff and the GP partners all have access to the Twitter account and have the ability to tweet. Any tweets relating to clinical or medical matters, such as a reference to a useful medical website, will have been seen by one of the GPs beforehand. Clinical tweets are sent predominantly by Dr Geraint Preest. Admin staff will only tweet about service and admin issues. If we've retweeted or tweeted a link to a webpage, this is done in good faith and does not replace a face to consultation with a Doctor or to replace the advice that patients may obtain from their own Doctor about individual care.
This is a learning process for us and we will be evaluating the use of Twitter and the feedback from our patients over time. We apologise that it may appear to be a "one way" stream of information from us to you but we are trying to use this as a means of circulating useful information about our service and other healthcare services in the community. The local health board and local hospitals are trying to reduce waste due to patients over ordering medicines that they don't need and to try to reduce inappropriate attendance at A&E with conditions that are more appropriately seen by the GP. As a result, you will notice that a number of our tweets reflect this agenda.
Confidentiality of Patients Records - A Guide to Practice Accreditation Visits - Joint Committee on Postgraduate Training for General Practice
Your records may be disclosed to persons outside the primary care team which provides their care. The purpose of such disclosure is strictly limited to a verification process which is required to ensure practice compliance with educational standards for trainee doctors. The visit team are all subject to a strict duty of confidentiality. Any patient may object to the whole, or any part, of the inspection of their own medical records and that their objection will be respected.