What information do we hold?

We hold a combination of personal contact and medical information on patients.

Contact information includes the following:

• Full name and date of birth
• Contact address
• Email and telephone numbers
• Occupation
• Other information relevant to any enquiry submitted via our website

Medical information may be a combination of relevant details provided by a referring GP or consultant, clinical notes compiled by the physiotherapist, and information collected directly from the patient through our consent form and subsequent consultations.

We do not collect or store any bank or credit card details at any time.

Why do we hold data, and how do we use it?

The information held is exclusively for the purpose of communicating with and managing the treatment of our patients, and therefore in the legitimate interest of providing safe and effective healthcare.

Communication information is used to arrange appointments and send reminders, and may also be used occasionally to provide more generic healthcare information, to elicit feedback to help us improve the service we provide, or to respond to any patient enquiry.

Medical information is held as part of your secure and confidential medical records to document and track treatments. This may include:

• Referral documentation and background supplied by your GP or consultant
• Relevant medical history and documented conditions
• Assessments carried out by your therapist
• Details of each treatment, with associated outcomes
• Exercise regimes prescribed as part of your treatment
• Discharge reports

How long will we hold information?

As part of legislated best practice, we are obliged to hold records for a minimum of 7 years following treatment. At that point any physical information held will be securely shredded, unless relevant to ongoing treatment.

Who might we share information with?

Information will only be shared with other medical professionals involved in the provision of medical care – in general your GP, consultant or private medical insurance company. For NHS patients a report on your treatment and outcomes will be sent to your GP when you are discharged.

3 Way Physiotherapy will not provide data to any third parties unless we are compelled to do so by law. We will never sell data for marketing or analysis purposes.

How do we ensure the security of information?

We take steps to ensure the security of patient data, and all 3 Way Physiotherapy employees are subject to confidentiality agreements and are trained to ensure compliance with our security policies.

All electronic data is held in systems requiring secure log in and with password protection. Paper based information is held within our secure clinic environment, which is alarmed outside clinical hours. Any information transferred outside of the clinic will either use secure encrypted email systems or secure tamper proof document pouches.

What are my rights to the information held?

Under the new GDPR legislation, the individual’s rights with regard to the data held have been increased, such that you now have:

• The right to be informed – you have the right to understand what type of information is held and how it is used – this privacy policy provides you with this.
• The right to access – you have the right to see or have copies of your personal information. A small fee may be payable. If you would like a copy of the information held on you please write to 3 Way Healthcare Limited, 11 Headley Road, Woodley, Reading, Berkshire RG5 4JB, or email us at info@3wayphysio.co.uk.
• The right to request that your personal information be rectified – it is important that information we hold is correct and updated, for example, if contact details change.
• The right to erasure – whilst generally GDPR allows the individual the right to have their information deleted unless there is compelling reasons not to do so, there is a general exemption with regard to healthcare information as it may be vital to the patient’s healthcare
• The right to restrict processing – we do not carry out any processing on the data we hold
• The right to data portability – you have the right to have a copy of your information in a useful form for potential transfer for use elsewhere. This is unlikely to be relevant in the healthcare world, but as with the right to access a small fee may be payable, and you should write to 3 Way Healthcare Limited, 11 Headley Road, Woodley, Reading, Berkshire RG5 4JB, or email us at info@3wayphysio.co.uk.

Use of cookies on the website

A cookie is a small text file that is placed on your machine to help the site provide a better user experience. It provide anonymised tracking data to third party applications like Google Analytics, a tool for us to be able to track our site’s performance and customer demographics – we only use this information for statistical analysis purposes. The website also uses Google to provide the maps on our Contact page, and YouTube uses cookies to, for example, collect information to help maintain the integrity of video statistics and prevent fraud.

As a rule, cookies will make your browsing experience better. They help us provide you with a better website by enabling us to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not. A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us.

You may prefer to disable cookies on this site and on others. The most effective way to do this is to disable cookies in your browser though this may prevent you from taking full advantage of the website. We suggest consulting the Help section of your browser or taking a look at the About Cookies website which offers guidance for all modern browsers.

Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to other websites of interest, for example in our blog and social media feeds. However, once you have used these links to leave our site, do note that we do not have any control over that other website. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such sites and such sites are not governed by this privacy statement. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.