Specialist Community Perinatal Mental Health Services Self-Assessment Tool privacy notice
The Royal College of Psychiatrists’ (the College) National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health (NCCMH) is running a Specialist Community Perinatal Mental Health Services Self-Assessment on behalf of NHS England.
The College is the data controller for the information you provide to us as part of an NCCMH project.
If you have any queries about the process or how we handle your information, please contact us at dataprotection@rcpsych.ac.uk
Sources of information used by NCCMH
Information is submitted to the NCCMH project from a number of sources.
NHS Trusts or organisations submit information on organisational processes and service users' care as part of their participation.
Some of this information is collected from audit case notes, although most of the information on organisational processes is collected specifically for their participation in the project. Data is submitted via secure web-based tools.
Security and confidentiality is maintained through the use of passwords and registration processes.
Where NHS Trusts or organisations submit data about service users’ care, the data is pseudonymous or anonymous.
The NCCMH project teams cannot identify the individual service user from the information they receive.
Where the data is pseudonymised, the individual NHS Trusts or organisation, hold the information needed to link a service user to the information submitted about the individual’s care.
The NCCMH projects also gather information directly from NHS Trusts or organisations to support the management of the NCCMH project, such as contact details for the local individuals responsible for the Trust or organisation’s participation in the NCCMH project.
The NCCMH may collect information from other sources, such as staff providing care and treatment, from service users, their family members, friends or carers, or organisations and individuals who work closely with the Trust/organisation in question.
Data is submitted via a third-party secure web-based tool or paper questionnaires received by pre-paid post.
The data collected from these sources is anonymous.
What will we do with the information you provide to us?
All of the information you provide will only be used for the purpose for which you provided it or to fulfil business, legal or regulatory requirements if necessary.
The NCCMH will not share any of the information provided to us with any third parties for marketing purposes.
Information is held in secure data centres in the EU and US, which comply with ISO 27001 security standards.
The information you provide will be held securely by us and/or our data processors whether the information is in electronic or physical format.
All the data is accessible only to staff members working on the individual project and data processors by approval.
All data is held within restricted areas, is password protected and encrypted.
The NCCMH produces reports on the aggregated data at NHS Trust or organisation and national levels at specific points during the project.
The NCCMH may also publish data on its website and in appropriate scientific journals.
We will use the staff contact details at the NHS Trust or organisation to contact you and in connection with any ongoing relationship with the relevant NCCMH project.
You can request for the information to not be used to communicate with you about events or other communications such as newsletters.
What information do we ask for, and why?
The NCCMH does not collect more information than we need to fulfil our stated purposes and will not retain it for longer than is necessary.
The information we ask for is used to either maintain a record of you and to contact you, or for assessing compliance against the agreed standards and providing reports on compliance and performance.
We process:
- Care data including date and time of admission, interventions received (e.g. medication, psychological therapies), processes of care such as medication reviews;
- Outcome data including date of discharge, re-admission, discharge destination and clinical improvements (e.g. scores on outcome measures such as Health of the Nation Outcomes Scales [HoNOS]);
- Data on organisational processes and procedures such as the use of staff supervision;
- Information on waiting times and length of stay;
Use of data processors
Data processors are third parties who process data for us, and with whom we have contracts in place.
This means that they cannot do anything with the information unless we have instructed them to do so.
All the information provided to our data processors is pseudonymised and they will not share your personal information with any other organisation.
They will hold it securely and retain it for the period that we instruct.
The data processors we use are:
- Software providers/hosts for databases which hold the data.
How long is the information retained for?
The NCCMH adheres to the timescales specified in the College’s Record Retention Schedule.
If you wish to learn more about our retention periods, please contact us using the details below.
Legal basis for processing
NCCMH projects process data under the contract the NHS Trust or organisation has entered into with us, or with the consent of the individual providing the data (e.g., the staff member, service user, family member, friend or carer submitting feedback).
Confidentiality
The information received and managed by NCCMH is treated as confidential.
The information is available to the project teams in an anonymous or pseudonymised format.
In the case of pseudonymised data, individual service users are only identifiable by the submitting NHS Trust/organisation using their coded service-user lists, which are held by them.
The NCCMH project teams do not have access to these lists.
The NCCMH project teams will not publish information that can enable individual service users, family, friends or carers, or staff to be identified, nor allow third parties to access the data.
The confidentiality and security of information is maintained in the following ways:
- All reports include aggregated data at the relevant level (national, NHS Trust/organisation);
- Reports on individual services, NHS trusts or organisations is only shared with the relevant organisation concerned;
- Small numbers are suppressed, and qualitative feedback is either aggregated or shown only where there is no identifiable information.
We will only do this where we have a statutory or regulatory requirement to do so, e.g. if we identify that staff or patients may be in imminent danger, if there are concerns about unsafe practices or where there may be breaches of human rights.
Further information on situations where we may do this are available on our website or in the terms and conditions of membership.
Your rights
Under the Data Protection Act 1998, and EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), you have rights as an individual which you can exercise in relation to the information we hold about you.
What if I do not want to take part in the survey?
Participation is voluntary, but NHS England expect all community perinatal mental health services to take part in this free survey.
Please contact aba.pericomm@rcpsych.ac.uk
Complaints or queries
The College takes any complaints about the way in which we handle personal data very seriously.
We encourage people to bring to our attention any concerns over our collection or use of information.
If you want to make a complaint about the way we have processed your personal information, you can contact us using the details at the bottom of this notice.
You can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office directly:
Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire SK9 5AF
Website
Tel: 0303 123 1113
Changes to this privacy notice
We keep our privacy notice under regular review. This Privacy Notice was last updated in December 2018.
How to contact us
If you want to request information about our privacy policy, you can email us at dataprotection@rcpsych.ac.uk or at the address below:
Data Protection Officer
Royal College of Psychiatrists
21 Prescot Street
London E1 8BB