Introduction

The Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust keeps 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 and from specialists and other healthcare providers, tests carried out both 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 without the NHS as well as comments and aide memoires reasonably made by healthcare professionals in this organisation who are appropriately involved in your health care.

When registering for NHS care within KMPT, all patients who receive care are registered on a organisational database, which is held by KMPT and hosted by Servelec, a third party company which has legal responsibilities to protect your information.

In order to assist in investigations and legal proceedings it may be necessary to share health related information with enforcement agencies such as the Police and HM Court Service. Explicit patient consent will generally be obtained in order to enable this sharing, however in certain circumstances the organisation may be required by law to release information. This would include:

• Where there is a risk of serious harm to you or other people
• Where a serious crime, e.g. murder / manslaughter / child abuse
• Where the courts have made a formal court order
• Where there is a legal requirement e.g. a road traffic offence has been committed

Where we are required to share information in these cases we will endeavour to inform you of this sharing, however this may not be possible dependant on the circumstances at the time.

You have the right to object to your data being processes for these purposes, however this right will be limited where there is an overriding legal or public interest in the information release.

We are required by Articles in the General Data Protection Regulations to provide you with the information in the following 9 subsections.