Privacy Policy
We have a legal duty to protect any information we collect so any feedback you provide us on our website is in accordance with Data Protection Laws. For more information on what data we collect and how we use it;
- See our privacy policy on the use of patient information
- See our privacy policy on the use of membership information
- See our privacy policy on the use of employment records
- See our privacy policy for our Occupational Health Service
You can also provide feedback on any of our services through our online feedback form.
If you have any concerns about how your information is used or wish to exercise any of your rights as stated above, please contact the Data Protection Officer:
The Trust’s Data Protection Officer is: Head of Information Governance
Telephone 01273 666473 or Email: sc-tr.infogov@nhs.net
You also have the right to raise a complaint with the Information Commissioner, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.
Helpline: 0303 123 1113 or online at https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/your-personal-information-concerns/
COVID-19 and your information - updated on 8 April 2020
Supplementary Privacy Notice on COVID-19 for Patients and Service Users
This notice describes how we may use your information to protect you and others during the COVID-19 outbreak. It supplements our main Privacy Notice which is available here.
The health and social care system is facing significant pressures due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Health and care information is essential to deliver care to individuals, to support health and social care services and to protect public health. Information will also be vital in researching, monitoring, tracking and managing the outbreak. In the current emergency it has become even more important to share health and care information across relevant organisations.
Existing law which allows confidential patient information to be used and shared appropriately and lawfully in a public health emergency is being used during this outbreak. Using this law the Secretary of State has required NHS Digital; NHS England and Improvement; Arms Length Bodies (such as Public Health England); local authorities; health organisations and GPs to share confidential patient information to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak. Any information used or shared during the COVID-19 outbreak will be limited to the period of the outbreak unless there is another legal basis to use the data. Further information is available on gov.uk here and some FAQs on this law are available here.
During this period of emergency, opt-outs will not generally apply to the data used to support the COVID-19 outbreak, due to the public interest in sharing information. This includes National Data Opt-outs. However in relation to the Summary Care Record, existing choices will be respected. Where data is used and shared under these laws your right to have personal data erased will also not apply. It may also take us longer to respond to Subject Access requests, Freedom of Information requests and new opt-out requests whilst we focus our efforts on responding to the outbreak.
In order to look after your health and care needs we may share your confidential patient information including health and care records with clinical and non clinical staff in other health and care providers, for example neighbouring GP practices, hospitals and NHS 111. We may also use the details we have to send public health messages to you, either by phone, text or email.
During this period of emergency we may offer you a consultation via telephone or video- conferencing. By accepting the invitation and entering the consultation you are consenting to this. Your personal/confidential patient information will be safeguarded in the same way it would with any other consultation.
We will also be required to share personal/confidential patient information with health and care organisations and other bodies engaged in disease surveillance for the purposes of protecting public health, providing healthcare services to the public and monitoring and managing the outbreak. Further information about how health and care data is being used and shared by other NHS and social care organisations in a variety of ways to support the COVID-19 response is here.
NHS England and Improvement and NHSX have developed a single, secure store to gather data from across the health and care system to inform the COVID-19 response. This includes data already collected by NHS England, NHS Improvement, Public Health England and NHS Digital. New data will include 999 call data, data about hospital occupancy and A&E capacity data as well as data provided by patients themselves. All the data held in the platform is subject to strict controls that meet the requirements of data protection legislation.
In such circumstances where you tell us you’re experiencing COVID-19 symptoms we may need to collect specific health data about you. Where we need to do so, we will not collect more information than we require and we will ensure that any information collected is treated with the appropriate safeguards.
We may amend this privacy notice at any time so please review it frequently. The date at the top of this page will be amended each time this notice is updated.
Cookies
Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites that you visit. They are widely used in order to make websites work, or work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site.
Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust uses cookies to help us understand how people use our website so that we can improve the user experience. For example we use cookies to see which pages are most popular, how long people spend on each page and what links they use to access the information they are seeking. We may also use cookies to enable the website to ‘remember’ details that you voluntarily give, such as when you complete online forms, so that you do not have to repeat the information next time you use the website.
On occasion we may embed content from another website, for example a YouTube video. Using a page with such content you may be presented with cookies from the third party website. Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust does not control the dissemination of these cookies. You should check the third party websites for more information about these.
You can set your browser to warn you before accepting cookies, or you can set it to automatically reject them. Rejecting cookies may inconvenience you in browsing our website.
See your browser 'help' button for how to change your cookie settings.
Cookie policy
We do not make use of cookies to collect any private or personally identifiable information.
The technical platform of this website, does use cookies solely to aid the proper technical functioning of the website. The cookies used in this website does not collect or disclose any personal information about you as a visitor.
Most web browsers allow some control of most cookies through the browser settings. To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, visit www.allaboutcookies.org.
To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites visit http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
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