COVID-19: Sharing and use of personal information

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During the COVID-19 emergency, the Trust is required to provide healthcare providers with information regarding COVID-19 attendances and patients.

NHS England and NHS Improvement have been given legal notice to support the processing and sharing of information to help the COVID-19 response and this notice also applies to the Trust.

The Trust has policies and procedures in place to release data to ensure we continue to comply with the data protection legislation: The Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and this is to continue even with this legal notice.  

We document all information being released outside of the Trust, so there is an audit trail and statistics available when required.

This advice sets out temporary measures to help improve communication between health and social care during this period and allows for information to be processed which is required for a COVID-19 purpose. These include:

  • understanding Covid-19 and risks to public health, trends in Covid-19, and controlling and preventing the spread of Covid-19 and such risks;
  • identifying and understanding information about patients or potential patients with or at risk of Covid-19, information about incidents of patient exposure to Covid-19 and the management of patients with or at risk of Covid-19, which includes locating and contacting patients and providing services in relation to testing, diagnosis, self-isolation, fitness to work, treatment, medical and social interventions and recovery from Covid-19;
  • understanding information about patient access to health services and adult social care services and the need for wider care of patients and vulnerable groups as a direct or indirect result of Covid-19 and the availability and capacity of those services or that care;
  • monitoring and managing the response to Covid-19 by health and social care bodies and the Government including providing information to the public about Covid-19 and its effectiveness and information about capacity, medicines, equipment, supplies, services and the workforce within the health services and adult social care services;
  • delivering services to patients, clinicians, the health services and adult social care services workforce and the public about and in connection with Covid-19.

Any requests for information should be sent through to SARs@eastamb.nhs.uk.

Any queries please send to informationgovernance@eastamb.nhs.uk and one of the team will be able to help.

Any Information Governance breaches please Datix as soon as they happen or when you become aware of the incident.

 

Published 6th April 2020

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