First Contact Opticians Privacy Policy
Introduction
Data Handling Policy
We hold various pieces of information about you including your name and address, and clinical details such as the state of health of your eyes, your spectacle and/or contact lens prescription, and copies of any letters we have written about you or received from other professionals, such as your doctor. You are entitled to a copy of this information although there may be an administrative charge for providing it. If you wish to see your records, please contact us at the details at the bottom of the page, and we will respond as quickly as possible and in any case are required to do so within 40 days.
If you require independent advice, contact the Information Commissioners Office at https://ico.org.uk .
If you have any concerns about our use of your personal data, you can make a complaint to us using the contact details at the bottom of this privacy notice.
If you remain unhappy with how we’ve used your data after raising a complaint with us, you can also complain to the ICO.
The ICO’s address:
Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Helpline number: 0303 123 1113
Website: https://www.ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint
We adhere to the guidelines of the College of Optometrists and the Data Protection Act and will not pass any of your personal information to a third party without your consent unless there is a clear public interest duty to do so. You will need to provide us with your consent if you wish us to pass your information to another optometrist.
If you are an NHS patient, we are obliged to provide the portion of your record that relates to NHS services to authorised persons within the NHS (who are in turn subject to a duty of confidentiality) if they request this. This is usually to confirm that we have provided the NHS services that we have been paid for, and to improve quality of care. It is also possible that the NHS may contact you to ask if you have received services (such as a sight test or spectacles) as part of this monitoring.
Within the practice we may use the information to analyse trends, or to audit our performance. This enables us to monitor and improve the quality of care that we offer you. Wherever possible (i.e. if we do not need to know who an individual patient is) we will only analyse trends from anonymised information.
The information we hold
- Your name, contact details and personal identifiers (such as date of birth and NHS number)
- Your general and ocular health history, your family medical and ocular history, and any relevant signs or symptoms you tell us about
- Details of medicines, spectacles and contact lenses prescribed for you
- Details of examinations and other healthcare checks and treatments we provide
- Information relevant to your continued care from other people who care for you or know you well, such as other health professionals and relatives
- Data from any individual under 16 years of age must be provided under the supervision of a parent/guardian. Without this consent, we are unable to accept/process this data.
How we protect this information
- All practice staff have a confidentiality clause within their contracts.
- We will not discuss your personal information with anyone other than you or, if you are under 16 and not Gillick competent, your parent or guardian without your permission.
- Confidential paper information requiring destruction is shredded.
- Any suspected breaches of security or loss of information are reported immediately and are dealt with appropriately by the person responsible for confidentiality and data management.
- Records are retained for periods as agreed with the optical bodies.
Log Data
Like many site operators, we collect information that your browser sends whenever you visit our Site.
This Log Data may include information such as your computer's Internet Protocol (IP) address, browser type, browser version, the pages of our Site that you visit, the time and date of your visit, the time spent on those pages and other statistics.
Cookies
How do we receive information about you?
We receive your Personal Information from various sources:
- When you, your family members or your carers provide us with your personal information.
- When you voluntarily provide us with your personal details in order to register on our Site;
- When you use or access our Site in connection with your use of our services;
Updates or amendments to this Privacy Policy
How to contact us
If you have any general questions about the site or the information we collect about you and how we use it, you can contact us by email at team@firstcontactopticians.co.uk , by phone on 020 8866 4911 , or by post at 126 Field End Road, Eastcote, Middlesex, HA5 1RJ.
Last Modified: October 2024