The purpose of this notice is to inform you of the type of information (including personal information) that Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital NHS Foundation Trust holds, how that information is used, who we may share that information with, and how we keep it secure and confidential. 

About us

Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital (LHCH) provides specialist services in cardiothoracic surgery, cardiology, respiratory medicine including adult cystic fibrosis and diagnostic imaging, both in the hospital and out in the community. LHCH serves a catchment area of 2.8 million people, spanning Merseyside, Cheshire, North Wales and the Isle of Man, and increasingly receives referrals from outside these areas for highly specialised services such as aortics.

The Breathing Point website is part of Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and is subject to the trust’s policies and procedures. Our full data protection and Information Governance statements can be found here:

Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital Information Governance

How we use information

We hold information centrally which is used for statistical purposes to allow us to plan for the provision of healthcare services. Examples of this include:

-Evaluation and review of services such as checking their quality and efficiency
-Making sure our services can meet patient needs in the future
-Preparing statistics on NHS performance
-Reviewing the care we provide to make sure it is of the highest standard

Personal and confidential information

For the purposes listed above, we will only use anonymised data which will mean you would not be able to be identified from that information. For information that may identify you (known as personal information) we would only use in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998. This Data Protection Act requires us to have a legal basis if we wish to process any personal information. We also have to honour any duty of confidence attached to information and apply Common Law Duty of Confidentiality requirements. This will mean where a legal basis does not exist to use your personal or confidential information we will not do so.

As a specialist hospital and healthcare provider, we do hold medical records and/or patient confidential data. In order to process that information we will have met a legal requirement, in general this is where we have complied with one of the following:

– The information is necessary for direct healthcare for patients
– We have received consent from individuals to be able to use their information for a specific purpose
– There is an overriding public interest in using the information e.g. in order to safeguard an individual, or to prevent a serious crime
– There is a legal requirement that will allow us to use or provide information (e.g. a formal court order)

The areas where we use personal information are:

– Individual funding requests a process where patients and their GPs can request special treatments not routinely funded by the NHS
– Assessments for continuing healthcare assessments (a package of care for those with complex medical needs)
– Responding to your queries, concerns or complaints
– Assessment and evaluation of safeguarding concerns for individuals

Sharing Data

We work with a number of other NHS and partner agencies to provide healthcare services to you. We may also share de-identified statistical information with them for the purpose of improving local services, for example understanding how conditions spread across our local area compared against other areas.

We may also contract with other organisations to provide a range of services to us such as analysis of data, Human Resource and IT services. In these instances, we ensure that our partners handle our information under strict conditions and in line with the law.

Keeping information secure and confidential

All staff have contractual obligations of confidentiality, enforceable through disciplinary procedures. All staff will receive appropriate training on confidentiality of information and staff (who because of their role) have regular access to personal information will have received additional specialist training.

We take relevant organisational and technical measures to unsure the information we hold is secure such as holding information in secure locations, restricting access to information to authorised personnel, protecting personal and confidential information held on equipment such as laptops with encryption.

Each NHS organisation has a senior person responsible for protecting the confidentiality of patient information and enabling appropriate information sharing. This person is called the Caldicott Guardian, who, at Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital, is Dr Raphael Perry. For more about our data protection and information governance arrangements at LHCH, please click here or for details about our Caldicott Guardian and team please visit our Information Governance team page.

Third parties

We may use third-party software on our website or to collate your details. Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital does not have any control over these third parties. For more information on our most commonly used software, including how to opt out of third parties collecting your data, please refer to the links below.

 

About cookies

We will not use cookies to collect personally identifiable information about you. By using our site you agree cookies from analytics software, which you can find out more about the Google Privacy Policy.

However, if you wish to restrict or block the cookies which are set by our website, or indeed any other website, you can do this through your browser settings. The ‘Help’ function within your browser should tell you how.

Please be aware that restricting cookies may affect the functionality of our websites.

Accessing the information we hold about you

You can request a copy of the details we hold about you at any time. For more details, please visit https://www.lhch.nhs.uk/about-lhch/information-governance/data-protection-and-confidentiality/accessing-health-records-and-personal-information/ or contact infogov@lhch.nhs.uk or Information Governance, Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Thomas Drive, Liverpool, L14 3PE

Changes to our policy

If our privacy policy changes in any way, we will place an updated version on this page. Regularly reviewing the page ensures you are always aware of the information we collect, how we use it and under what circumstances, if any, we will share it with other parties.

Information Commissioner

You have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner if you are not happy with any aspect of LHCH’s processing of personal data or believe that we are not meeting our responsibilities as a data controller. The contact details for the Information Commissioner are:

Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane,
Wilmslow SK9 5AF

Website: ico.org.uk