Guidelines

Disclosure of confidential Information

Data protection – looking after the information you hold about patients

If you handle and store information about identifiable, living people – for example, about patients – you are legally obliged to protect that information.

Under the Data Protection Act, you must:

• only collect information that you need for a specific purpose;
• keep it secure;
• ensure it is relevant and up to date;
• only hold as much as you need, and only for as long as you need it; and
• allow the subject of the information to see it on request.

Disclosure

• The only permitted disclosure is in order to comply with a subject access request.