INTRODUCTION

Medicare EMS Group UK Ltd [Medicare] is a private medical provider specialising in pre-hospital event medicine.

Medicare deals directly with clients and does not deal with 3rd party providers.

Medicare strives to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA).

This policy explains how we use the personal data. We want to help you understand how we work with your data, so that you can make informed choices and be in control of your information.

This policy explains how we use your personal data for our healthcare services provided at the events we cover.

This policy covers:

• How we get personal data
• What we use your personal data for
• Sharing your personal data
• Retention
• Data security and transfers
• Your rights

If you have any further questions about how we process your information, or you would like to make a data access request, please don’t hesitate to get in touch by contacting our Clinical Governance Team:

Address: Executive Suite, Park View Baddow Park Estate, Great Baddow, Chelmsford, Essex, CM2 7SY.

Email: clinical-support@medicare-ems.uk

HOW WE COLLECT PERSONAL DATA:

Personal details

When you receive treatment and/ore care by a member of our staff you will be asked to provide basic information about yourself including:

• Full name
• Date of birth
• Home address
• Contact telephone number
• Ethnicity
• GP address
• Next of kin name and contact telephone number

Health and medical information

In addition to the above the clinician treating you will ask if you have any medical conditions and/or any medications (both prescription and over the counter) that you take on a regular basis. This is to ensure that the clinician is well informed of any conditions that may impact their assessment of you and ensure that the treatment provided is in line with best practice.

This information can only be provided by yourself (parent/guardian), we do not access the NHS spine at any point.

WHAT WE USE YOUR PERSONAL DATA FOR

The purposes for which we use your personal data and the legal grounds on which we do so are as follows:

• We obtain and use your medical information because this is necessary for medical purposes, including medical treatment and the provision of healthcare or treatment. This includes the information collected through your contact with our medical team that will be recorded on a patient report form (of which you will receive a copy).
• Where necessary, we may need to share personal data for the purposes of crime prevention.
• We will store your medical information by scanning the patient report form to our electronic system and destroying the paper version confidentially. All our patient report forms will be kept for 10 years following your interaction with one of our clinicians. Strict confidentiality and data security provisions will apply at all times to any such audit and access. We hold you data as we may need to review your information and, where necessary, make disclosures in compliance with reasonable requests by regulatory bodies including the Health and Care Professionals Council, MHRA, and Care Quality Commission, or as otherwise required by law or regulation.
• For safety, regulatory and/or compliance purposes, we will audit your interactions with our service. Strict confidentiality and data security provisions will apply at all times to any such audit and access.

SHARING YOUR PERSONAL DATA WITH OTHERS

• We may share your personal data with other health care professionals where your care needs to continue with an NHS organisation (such as a hospital or NHS Ambulance Service). This will be done with you present. Medicare will not share your personal data without your consent. This may include sharing information with such services for safeguarding purposes in accordance with our legal obligations.
• We may preserve or disclose information about you to comply with a law, regulation, legal process, or governmental request; to assert legal rights or defend against legal claims; or to prevent, detect, or investigate illegal activity, fraud, abuse, violations of our terms, or threats to the security of our services or the physical safety of any person.

Except as described above, we will never share your personal information with any other party without your consent.

RETENTION PERIODS

We retain your medical records in accordance with national best practice guidance – in particular, advice provided by the Department of Health (2006) Records management: NHS code of practice, and summary guidance issued by the British Medical Association. The below is a summary of our retention procedure:

Type of record	Retention period
Patient Report Forms	Patient report forms retained for 10 years after death or after the patient has permanently left the country unless the patient remains in the European Union.
Clinical audit records	5 years – anonymised

 

DATA STORAGE, SECURITY AND TRANSFERS

We store all your personal health data on secure servers. We do not email your personal date to anyone including other members of our company. In the event that a third party requires your information for litigation purposed for example, the information will be sent via an encrypted email service or approved courier service.

Once the paper version of your record has been received by Medicare’s head office, we use strict procedures and security features to prevent unauthorised access. We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy.

YOUR RIGHTS

You have specific rights under the GDPR and DPA to:

• Withdraw that consent at any time to us processing our data. You can do this by contacting the company using the details above.
• Understand and request a copy of information we hold about you.
• Ask us to rectify or erase information we hold about you, subject to limitations relating to our obligation to store medical records for prescribed periods of time.
• Ask us to restrict our processing of your personal data or object to our processing.
• Ask for your data to be provided on a portable basis

You may also contact the Information Commissioners Office (the data protection regulator in the UK):

Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Telephone: 0303 123 1113 (local rate).