You are likely aware that NHS England have determined that from November 2022 all patients will have complete prospective (future) access to their medical records. As a practice we fully support the principle of patient access, so we are currently providing access in a manner that we determine to be safe, hence we will enable individual-level patient access upon request.

Please find the request form below. We would be grateful if you could read the provided information carefully before applying to access your records online.

• Future online access registration form (PDF)

The form will need to be printed and brought to the practice. The practice will also need to verify your identity.

If you are unable to print this form, you can pick it up at the practice.

Confidentiality Notice

This document and the information contained therein is the property of Eleanor Cross Healthcare. This document contains information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise protected from disclosure. It must not be used by, or its contents reproduced or otherwise copied or disclosed without the prior consent in writing from Eleanor Cross Healthcare.

Introduction

This policy is designed to protect both patients and staff from abuse or allegations of abuse and to assist patients to make an informed choice about their examinations and consultations. Eleanor Cross Healthcare is committed to providing a safe, comfortable environment where patients and staff can be confident that best practice is being followed at all times and the safety of everyone is of paramount importance.

This Chaperone Policy adheres to local and national guidance and policy –i.e.:‐ ‘NCGST Guidance on the role and effective use of chaperones in Primary and Community Care settings’. The Chaperone Policy is clearly advertised through patient information leaflets, website (when available) and can be read at the Practice upon request. A Poster is also displayed in the Practice Waiting Area.

All patients are entitled to have a chaperone present for any consultation, examination or procedure where they consider one is required. The chaperone may be a family member or friend, but on occasions a formal chaperone may be preferred. Patients are advised to ask for a chaperone if required, at the time of booking an appointment, if possible, so that arrangements can be made and the appointment is not delayed in any way. The Healthcare Professional may also require a chaperone to be present for certain consultations.

All staff are aware of and have received appropriate information in relation to this Chaperone Policy. All trained chaperones understand their role and responsibilities and are competent to perform that role. There is no common definition of a chaperone and their role varies considerably depending on the needs of the patient, the healthcare professional and the examination being carried out. Their role can be considered in any of the following areas:

• Emotional comfort and reassurance to patients
• Assist in examination (e.g. during IUCD insertion)
• Assist in undressing
• Act as interpreter
• Protection to the healthcare professional against allegations / attack

Guidelines

Chaperones are most often required or requested where a male examiner is carrying out an
intimate examination or procedure on a female patient, but the designation of the chaperone will depend on the role expected of them, whether participating in the procedure or providing a supportive role.

• Establish there is a genuine need for an intimate examination and discuss this with the patient and whether a formal chaperone (such as a nurse) is needed.
• Explain to the patient why an examination is necessary and give the patient an opportunity to ask questions. The chaperone would normally be the same sex as the patient and the patient will have the opportunity to decline a particular person as a chaperone, if that person is considered not acceptable for any reason.
• Offer a chaperone or invite the patient to have a family member / friend present.
• If the patient does not want a chaperone, record that the offer was made and declined in the patient’s notes.
• Obtain the patient’s consent before the examination and be prepared to discontinue the examination at any stage at the patient’s request.
• Record that permission has been obtained in the patient’s notes.
• Once the chaperone has entered the room, they should be introduced by name and the patient allowed privacy to undress / dress. Use drapes / curtains where possible to maintain dignity. There should be no undue delay prior to examination once the patient has removed any clothing.
• Ensure the chaperone understands what the procedure or examination is and what the routine steps to perform it are.
• Explain what is being done at each stage of the examination, the outcome when it is complete and what is proposed to be done next. Keep discussion relevant and avoid personal comment.
• If a chaperone has been present, record that fact and the identity of the chaperone in the patient’s notes.
• During the examination, the chaperone may be needed to offer reassurance, remain alert to any indication of distress but should be courteous at all times.
• Record any other relevant issues or concerns in the patient’s notes, immediately following the consultation.
• Chaperones should only attend the part of the consultation that is necessary – other verbal communication should be carried out when the chaperone has left.
• Any request that the examination be discontinued should be respected.
• Healthcare professionals should note that they are at an increased risk of their actions being misconstrued or misrepresented, if they conduct intimate examinations where no other person is present.

Procedure

The clinician will contact Reception to request a chaperone.

• The clinician will record in the notes that the chaperone is present, and identify the chaperone.
• Where no chaperone is available the examination will not take place – the patient should not
• be permitted to dispense with the chaperone once a desire to have one present has been expressed.
• The chaperone will enter the room discreetly and remain in room until the clinician has finished the examination.
• The chaperone will normally attend inside the curtain at the head of the examination couch and watch the procedure.
• To prevent embarrassment, the chaperone should not enter into conversation with the patient or GP unless requested to do so, or make any mention of the consultation afterwards.
• The patient can refuse a chaperone, and if so this must be recorded in the patient’s medical record.

View our Confidentiality Code of Practice policy here.

View our Equality and Diversity Policy here.

We are continually looking to turn patient feedback into real improvements in the services we provide. We use it to focus on the things that matter most to our patients, carers and their families.

Giving feedback

To provide feedback:

• take part in the Friends and Family Test
• leave a review on the NHS website
• phone us – Delapre Medical Centre 01604 708481 or Whitefields Surgery 01604 760171
• For complaints, please email us northantsicb.complaints.k83010@nhs.net

Further information

Complaints leaflet (PDF)

Complaints policy and procedure (PDF)

View our Freedom of Information Act policy here.

NHS England requires that the net earnings of doctors engaged in the practice is publicised, and the required disclosure is shown below. However, it should be noted that the prescribed method for calculating earnings is potentially misleading because it takes no account of how much time doctors spend working in the practice, and should not be used to form any judgement about GP earnings, nor to make any comparison with any other practice.

The average pay for GPs working in Eleanor Cross Healthcare in the financial year ending 31st March 2021 was £55,629 before tax and national insurance. This is for 5 part time GPs and 6 salaried GPs who worked in the practice for more than six months.

Government requires GPs to publish their earnings

Eleanor Cross Healthcare provides this information, for those interested persons, in order to comply with requirements under the GP Contract; however, we do not believe that publishing our earnings is either appropriate or relevant to the clinical care of our patients. In support of this, we provide some detailed background to this contract requirement.

Politics in the GP workplace

In September 2014, in preparation for the GP contract for the year 2015/16, negotiators for NHS Employers on behalf of NHS England had only one item on their agenda for discussion in determining the changes in the GP contract. One would think this might be adding some important clinical improvements, like enhancing the care of vulnerable patients, or perhaps some new targets for reducing serious infections, or possibly incentives to improve the care of those suffering from cancer, but no, the only new thing they wanted in the GP contract was an entirely political one, and it was that the salaries of GPs be exposed to the public. This year, therefore, according to our contract, average GP earnings must be published. The reason cited for this move is ‘transparency’, yet we are not seeing similar transparency being applied to every NHS worker or even other ‘public servants’ [although paid from the public purse and widely considered to be public servants, GPs are actually independent contractors to the NHS].

Consequences of such actions

Such a single-minded determination to do this clearly betrays the contempt in which GPs are held by those in power. This directive would have only come directly from the government; a government which has been intent (along with previous governments) on destroying the very fabric of General Practice and with it, the rest of the NHS. Unintended (or some would say intended) consequences of publishing income include, making it more difficult for practices to recruit doctors, continuing the downward pressure on salaries, widening inequalities between practices, localities and regions, further increasing the risks to the very business of General Practice and paving the way for an invasion of profiteering private enterprise [initial forays into this area by some such providers have already been proven to provide a poorer quality service, and contracts are often terminated early, leading to patients suddenly being without a GP].

For 2017/18, the government will continue this approach with General Practice, and is demanding that individual GP earnings must be published each year. Even without all the above misgivings, simply from the point of view of a basic right to privacy and confidentiality to which we are all entitled, the doctors at Eleanor Cross Healthcare do not believe that doing so is in the best interests of patients, nor will it improve clinical care of patients in the slightest and we therefore strongly question its true purpose and value.

General practice at risk

The single greatest asset of any workforce is actually its workers, and particularly more so with the NHS, which largely runs only because of the goodwill of its doctors, nurses and other hardworking staff. However, as aptly illustrated by its recent approach with the junior doctors, the way the government is treating its crucial staff reveals its true intentions towards the NHS.

In March 2016, almost 300 GP surgeries in England face closure because of financial pressures and nearly half have doctors planning to leave the NHS; in total more than 900 GP practices are in a weak financial position. This situation has not improved over the past 12 months. This is about 1 in 10 of all practices. There is therefore a very real risk that many thousands of patients will be left without a local GP surgery that can deliver the care that they need.

Take action!

If you are at all concerned about the future of the NHS, and especially General Practice, widely considered to be the cornerstone of the NHS, you can write to your local MP or to the Health Secretary. As GPs, we have already repeatedly made our feelings known, in last ditch attempts to get the message across to politicians and the public about what is happening to General Practice. As patients, but also as voters, you may wish to do the same.

GP Earnings – Some perspective and actual transparency

Publicly available figures show that Eleanor Cross Healthcare receives about £104 of funding to care for one of our patients for an entire year. For this, any patient can see us as many times as they need, including face to face, telephone or home visit encounters. Our patients see us, on average, about six times a year, with some vulnerable patients each seeing us 15 or more times a year.

From this £104 figure, as with other GP practices, we pay our heating, lighting, cleaning and maintenance bills, our staff wages, buy all our equipment and anything else that is required for providing care and running a practice. What is then left over is shared between the partners who own the business.

£103.56 per year equates to just 40p funding per patient per working day, or £2.00 per week

Also bear in mind that with this level of funding (which realistically would only provide for two consultations in a year if paid at normal market rates); GPs do not aim to simply provide basic low rate care. The vast majority of GPs provide not only high quality care but also, more importantly, safe care, whilst also working towards difficult and often irrational government targets; all of this is often at immense personal cost to themselves and their families. Regardless of what you might read in the papers and what you might hear from the mouths of politicians, GPs are dedicated professionals who have an innate sense of striving to do their best to help people.

Comparing the annual costs of everyday items:

• £103.56 is the cost of medical care for you for one whole year
• £150 is the price of the cheapest 4G phone contract
• £170 is a trip to the cinema every fortnight
• £179 is how much a monthly haircut would cost
• £203 is the cost of getting the Daily Mail† Monday to Saturday
• £209 is an average bottle of wine every two weeks
• £240 is the cost of a basic SkyTV package
• £339 is the average cost to insure your dog

† Only the financial cost can be quantified accurately, costs to soul and self-respect are likely to be greater

Eleanor Cross Healthcare have allocated a named accountable GP for all of our registered patients. New patients joining us will be advised of their accountable GP at the point of registration.

If you do not know who your named GP is, please ask a member of our reception team. Your named GP is for care coordination purposes only and therefore you are eligible to see any GP within the practice.

Please view our privacy notices for the practice. If you have any queries, please contact the practice:

• • General (PDF)
  • AGEM commissioning support unit (PDF)
  • Call recording (PDF)
  • Care Quality Commission (PDF)
  • Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) (PDF)
  • Collaborative care team (PDF)
  • Commissioning, planning, risk stratification and patient identification (PDF)
  • COVID-19 (PDF)
  • Direct care (PDF)
  • Direct care – Emergencies (PDF)
  • East Midlands ambulance service (PDF)
  • GPA extended access (PDF)
  • GP appointments data collection (PDF)
  • GP – Community pharmacist consultation services (PDF)
  • GP Connect (PDF)
  • GP extended hours (PDF)
  • GP online consultation services (PDF)
  • GP online consultation services – NHS APP (PDF)
  • GP online consultation services – SysmOnline (PDF)
  • Medical interoperability gateway (PDF)
  • Medicines management (PDF)
  • Medicines management – Abbott laboratories (PDF)
  • Medicines management – Eclipse (PDF)
  • Medicines management – Interface Clinical Services Ltd (PDF)
  • Medicines management – Prescribing Services Ltd (PDF)
  • National screening programmes (PDF)
  • NEL commissioning support unit (PDF)
  • NHS Digital (PDF)
  • NHS health checks (PDF)
  • Northamptonshire care record (PDF)
  • Online and video consultations directions 2021 (PDF)
  • Payments (PDF)
  • Population health management (PDF)
  • Primary Care Network (PDF)
  • Public health (PDF)
  • Safeguarding (PDF)
  • Summary Care Record (PDF)
  • UK Biobank (PDF)

Your health and social care records contain important information about you and making that information available to health and social care staff involved in your care means that everyone can work together to give you the best support we can.

We’ll always keep your information safe and never sell it or pass it on for commercial or marketing purposes. If you haven’t opted out, we’ll assume you’re happy for us to share your records. We’ll always ask for your consent before we check your record shared from another organisation, unless we have serious concern about your welfare.

If you have chosen not to opt out

Information held on your records may be securely shared with appropriate professionals who are working with you to provide support, so your information is available when it is needed most.

However, health and social care professionals will still ask for you explicit consent to view certain information when treating and supporting you, which means that you are always presented with an option to agree or disagree.

You can be sure that:

• Systems hold your information safely and securely.
• Staff are trained in the importance of handling your information correctly.
• Access to your records on systems can be restricted, if they are sensitive or private, which means they will not be visible in another care setting.
• Information is only shared with organisations that have the necessary safe an secure systems and processes that ensure confidential information is protected.
• Your information is not sold, or pass on to organisations for commercial or marketing purposes.
• You can decide what information is not to be shared between professionals or organisations.

Your health and social care records contain information recorded by professionals who are involved in your care.

This information might be details of your appointments, assessments, medications or anything that would help a health or social care professional to support you.

It’s a good idea for everyone to make that information available in case they need care or help in an emergency – particularly people with certain health conditions or illnesses.

Professionals can provide better care and work more effectively and efficiently if relevant information about you can be shared among agencies providing your support. Sharing your records means health and social care worked have you most up to date information. It also means you don’t have to repeatedly provide the same facts, have unnecessary tests and it would prevent you being given medicine that you’re allergic to.

At Eleanor Cross Healthcare data protection is very important.

As a practice we keep data on you relating to who you are, where you live, what you do, your family, possibly your friends, your employers, your habits, your problems and diagnoses, the reasons you seek help, your appointments, where you are seen and when you are seen, who by, referrals to specialists and other healthcare providers, tests carried out here and in other places, investigations and scans, treatments and outcomes of treatments, your treatment history, the observations and opinions of other healthcare workers, within and outside of the NHS as well as comments and aide memoires reasonably made by healthcare professionals in this practice who are appropriately involved in your health care.

Health and Social Care (Safety and Quality) Act 2012 (HSCA), Health Service (Control of Patient Information) Regulations 2002 (COPI),  General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA) have introduced legal basis for information sharing between different organisations and have set the requirements for this sharing to be allowed.

You have the right to object to sharing of your data in certain circumstances but we have an overriding responsibility to do what is in your best interests.

Please see below regarding different data sharing schemes which are in place at Eleanor Cross Healthcare:

• Summary Care Record
• Sharing with other Community Health and Social Care Teams
• Coronavirus (COVID-19) amendments to data sharing

For further information regarding other data sharing, including who we share it with, what data is shared and your rights please see our privacy notices.

Summary Care Record

What is a Summary Care Record?

A Summary Care Record (SCR) is an electronic record containing important health information. It allows authorised healthcare professionals to access essential information about you in an emergency or when the GP practice is closed. This means that if you were to have an accident or become ill, healthcare staff treating you will have immediate access to important information about your health.

SCR can help the staff involved in your care to make better and safer decisions about how to treat you.

What information is held in SCR?

As a minimum SCR holds following information:

• information about any medicines you are taking currently
• allergies you may suffer from and any bad reactions to medicines you have had
• your name, address, date of birth and NHS number.

SCR can be enhanced by adding Additional Information, such as:

• details of long-term conditions
• significant medical history (past and present)
• reasons for medications
• immunisations
• specific communication needs
• end of life care information
• temporary addition: Coronavirus COVID-19 specific codes in relation to suspected, confirmed, Shielded Patient List and other COVID-19 related information
• other items that you would like to include.

Specific sensitive information like fertility treatment, sexually transmitted infections, pregnancy terminations and gender reassignment will not be automatically included.

When is SCR used?

SCR is only used for direct patient care and you will be asked to give permission each time and member of NHS staff wishes to access your records, unless it is a medical emergency and you are unable to give permission.

Who has access to SCR?

Users accessing SCR must have the right level of security clearance and hold a special card with the correct codes set. Each time anyone accesses your SCR, this information is logged.

If you require information about the access to your SCR, you can make a Subject Access Request to NHS Digital. They will provide the list of organisations that accessed your SCR and the date/time of access.

Further information can be found on NHS Digital website.

What choice do I have?

Eleanor Cross Healthcare is a part of the national Summary Care Record Programme and SCR will be created for you.

The purpose of SCR is to improve the care that you receive, however, if you do not want to have SCR you have the option to opt-out.

Regardless of the past decisions, you can change your mind regarding the SCR type and opt-out at any time.

You can choose any of the following options:

• to have SCR with Core Information
• to have SCR with Additional Information
• to opt-out of having SCR.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) response: SCR Additional information

To help the NHS to respond to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, we have to include Additional Information in SCR for patients by default, unless you have previously told the NHS that you did not want your information to be shared.

To make the changes, you should complete filling the summary care record form and return it to the GP Practice. You can request a copy of this form by contacting the practice.

Further information about SCR can be found on NHS.UK Website.

Sharing with other community health and social care teams

What is this type of information sharing?

We as a GP Practice often work with other clinicians such as District Nurses, Community Midwives, Community Matrons, Health Visitors, Mental Health Teams, Social Services, Palliative Care. These teams are not employed by Eleanor Cross Healthcare, but they may need access to your medical information to support you appropriately. They abide by all of our rules around patient confidentiality.

The information is shared two ways:

• we share the information with the community teams by allowing them to see the information we hold about you, and
• community teams share the information with us by allowing us to see the information they hold about you.

What information is shared?

These teams are given access to the computerised medical records held at Eleanor Cross Healthcare, which contains your personal and medical history.

When is this type of sharing used?

The information is shared only for direct patient care and you will be asked to give your permission for sharing during the initial contact with any of the community teams.

Who has access to this information?

Users accessing this information must have the right level of security clearance. Each time anyone accesses your record, this information is logged.

If you require information about the access to your record, you can make a Subject Access Request to the relevant community team or Eleanor Cross Healthcare.

What choice do I have?

The purpose of sharing information for direct care is to improve the care that you receive. It is covered by Law. Eleanor Cross Healthcare will share your information with community teams (unless you have opted-out previously).

However, if you do not want your data being shared with the community teams, you have the option to opt-out.

Regardless of your past decisions, you can change your mind at any time.

You can choose any of the following options:

• for sharing information out:
• you consent for community teams to access your record
• you dissent from community teams to access your records (opt-out)
• for sharing information in:
• you consent for us to access your record held by the community team
• you dissent from us to access your record held by the community team (opt-out)

To make the changes, you should complete the opt-out form and return it to the GP Practice. You can request a copy of this form by contacting the practice.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) amendments to data sharing

What are coronavirus (COVID-19) amendments to data sharing?

The Secretary of State has served notices under Regulation 3(4) of the Health Service (Control of Patient Information) Regulations 2002 (COPI) to require organisations to process confidential patient information in the manner set out below and for the purposes set out in Regulation 3(1) of COPI to support the response to coronavirus (COVID-19).

‘Processing’ for the coronavirus (COVID-19) purposes includes sharing of confidential patient information to persons and organisations permitted to process confidential patient information as defined in Regulation 3(2).

Coronavirus (COVID-19) purpose includes but is not limited to the following:

• understanding coronavirus (COVID-19) and risks to public health, trends in coronavirus (COVID-19) and controlling and preventing the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19)
• identifying and understanding information about patients or potential patients with or at risk of coronavirus (COVID-19), information about incidents of patient exposure to coronavirus (COVID-19) and the management of patients with or at risk of coronavirus (COVID-19) including: locating, contacting, screening, flagging and monitoring such patients; also collecting information about and providing services in relation to testing, diagnosis self-isolation, fitness to work, treatment, medical and social interventions and recovery
• understanding information about patient access to health services and adult social care services as a direct or indirect result of coronavirus (COVID-19) and the availability and capacity of those services or that care
• monitoring and managing the response to coronavirus (COVID-19) by health and social care bodies and the Government including providing information to public about coronavirus (COVID-19)
• delivering services to patients, clinicians, the health services and adult social care services workforce and the public about and in connection with coronavirus (COVID-19)
• research and planning in relation to coronavirus (COVID-19).

Eleanor Cross Healthcare will share the information via the clinical IT system.

What information is shared?

In order to comply with issued notice, Eleanor Cross Healthcare will share the following information:

• name, address including postcode, date of birth, NHS number, sex, ethnicity, date of death (if applicable)
• coded diagnoses and findings
• medication and other prescribed items
• investigations, tests and results
• treatments and outcomes
• vaccinations and immunisations.

When is information shared?

The data is shared for the purpose of coronavirus (COVID-19) where it is required for this purpose and it will be processed solely to this purpose in accordance with Regulation 7 of COPI.

The notices will expire on 30 September 2021 (but they may be extended further).

Who has access to information?

The Secretary of State has issued notices under the COPI regulations requiring the following organisations to process information:

• NHS Digital
• NHS England and Improvements
• health organisations
• arm’s length bodies (for example Public Health England)
• local authorities

What choice do I have?

Due to served notices under COPI Eleanor Cross Healthcare has to share your data with NHS Digital, unless you have opted-out.

Regardless of the past decisions, you can change your mind regarding the opt-out or opt-in at any time.

You can choose any of the following options:

• to allow information sharing
• to opt-out using Type 1 Opt-out option.

Type 1 Opt-out means no information will be collected from the date opt-out form is received. This means that GP Practice will not share your information with NHS Digital the purpose of coronavirus (COVID-19).

You can register this type of opt-out by filling the opt-out form and returning it to the GP practice. You can request a copy of this form by contacting the practice.

The practice is committed to active involvement in general practitioner training. The practice hosts a variety of personnel undergoing medical training from medical students through to doctors training to be GP’s.

The medical students are usually on attachment from the University of Leicester Medical School. An essential part of their training, is to regularly observe our doctors during consultations. If you do not wish a Medical Student to be present during your consultation or examination then please inform a Patient Care Navigator or the relevant clinician. Patients will always be informed when a student is accompanying a doctor and can always decline to have them present although the presence of a student will not adversely affect the quality of the care you will receive.

FY2 Doctors are qualified doctors in their second year of post graduate training, which consists of three, 4-monthly rotation in different specialities.

GPST’s (formally known as GP Registrars) are fully qualified doctors gaining specialist training in general practice. They are attached to the practice for 4 months in their first year of this training. They then return for their entire third year and hold clinics in the same way as a GP.

The practice fully supports the NHS Zero Tolerance Policy. The aim of this policy is to tackle the increasing problem of violence against staff working in the NHS and ensures that doctors and all other staff have a right to care for others without fear of being attacked or abused.

We understand that ill patients do not always act in a reasonable manner and will take this into consideration when trying to deal with a misunderstanding or complaint. We ask you to treat your doctors and all other staff courteously and act reasonably.

All incidents will be followed up and you will be sent a formal warning after a second incident or removed from the practice list after a third incident if your behaviour has been unreasonable.

However, aggressive behaviour, be it violent or verbal abusive, will not be tolerated and may result in you being removed from The Practice list and, in extreme cases, the Police will be contacted if an incident is taking place and the patient is posing a threat to staff or other patients.

Removal from the practice list

A good patient-doctor relationship, based on mutual respect and trust, is the cornerstone of good patient care. The removal of patients from our list is an exceptional and rare event and is a last resort in an impaired patient-practice relationship. When trust has irretrievably broken down, it is in the patient’s interest, just as much as that of The Practice, that they should find a new practice. An exception to this is on immediate removal on the grounds of violence e.g. when the Police are involved.

Removing other members of the household

In rare cases, however, because of the possible need to visit patients at home it may be necessary to terminate responsibility for other members of the family or the entire household. The prospect of visiting patients where a relative who is no longer a patient of the practice by virtue of their unacceptable behaviour resides, or being regularly confronted by the removed patient, may make it too difficult for the practice to continue to look after the whole family. This is particularly likely where the patient has been removed because of violence or threatening behaviour and keeping the other family members could put doctors or other staff at risk.