Patient Privacy Notice

1. Who Is Responsible for Your Information

GH Physiocare is the name used by Q CARE SOLUTIONS LTD (company number: 15640796) for their physiotherapy division, the controller of the patient information described here.

You can contact us at 480A Mansfield Road, Sherwood, Nottingham NG5 2EL, by telephone on +44 7733 209673, or by email at info@ghphysiocare.co.uk.

For privacy enquiries, you can contact us by the email address info@ghphysiocare.co.uk.

2. Information We Collect

We may collect your name, date of birth, address and contact details; appointment and payment details; referral or insurance information where relevant; and information you give us about your symptoms, medical history, medicines, disability, treatment and progress.

Our clinicians create assessment notes, treatment plans and correspondence as part of your clinical record. If you contact us online, we may also receive the information you enter in a booking or enquiry form. The website uses analytics and cookies for better user experience.

We normally receive information from you. Where relevant to your care, we may also receive information from a referring clinician, your GP, an insurer or another person you have asked to assist with your care. We will explain the source if it is not obvious and the law requires us to do so.

3. Why We Use It and Our Legal Reasons

We use information to answer enquiries, arrange appointments, assess and treat you, communicate about your care, keep accurate records, process payments and eligible insurance claims, maintain safe services, and comply with legal and professional obligations. We use only information reasonably needed for each purpose.

Under the UK GDPR, our Article 6 lawful bases are generally:

Information about your health is special category data and needs an additional condition. For assessment, diagnosis and treatment, we ordinarily rely on Article 9(2)(h), health or social care, where the applicable duty of confidentiality and professional safeguards are met. A different condition may apply in a specific situation, such as Article 9(2)(f) for legal claims or Article 9(2)(c) for an emergency involving vital interests.

We do not treat your signature consenting to physiotherapy treatment as blanket UK GDPR consent to use or share all health information.

4. Who Can See or Receive Information

Access to the clinic's WhatsApp account is limited to authorised admin staff and the same staff manages the telephone calls and voicemails. We may backup WhatsApp messages to help recover them if the clinic device is lost or replaced. Backups are protected using WhatsApp's end-to-end encrypted backup feature and a clinic-controlled account.

We do not routinely export patient chats to our office emails. Any enquiries that do not lead to treatment are deleted from the WhatsApp account within three months of our last contact. If you become a patient, relevant booking information is transferred to your patient record and kept under our clinical-record retention policy.

Other patient information collected in registration forms, and during the treatment by the clinician, is accessible only to staff and clinicians who need it for their work.

Depending on your circumstances, we may disclose the minimum relevant information to:

• Another clinician involved in your care, your GP or a referring service
• An insurer where a claim is being made
• An emergency service where necessary

We will consider your wishes and any objection to sharing for your direct care. We may also disclose information when required by law or where justified to protect you or someone else from serious harm.

Providers that support our practice, such as Zanda practice management system, Hostinger, Google Business, and Teya payments, may process information for us under appropriate arrangements. We do not sell patient health information. We do not provide your clinical details to advertisers for their own marketing.

If you want to know whether we intend to share information with a particular person or organisation, please ask us. We will explain what is proposed and whether your permission is required. A request that we do not share information will be considered in light of the specific disclosure and our duties; it does not automatically prevent every disclosure permitted or required by law.

5. Appointments, Messaging and Marketing

We may use the contact details you give us for booking, reminders and messages about your care. Our usual booking method is through telephone or WhatsApp. The information that is used via these channels are your name, age and chief complaints. This is used to make a suitable appointment with an appropriate clinician by matching their skill sets to ensure maximum patient satisfaction.

Tell us if a contact method is unsuitable. Please avoid sending sensitive medical details over ordinary social media or messaging where a safer route is available.

We send promotional emails or texts only where permitted by the UK GDPR and electronic marketing rules.

6. How Long We Keep Information

We keep clinical records for the periods set out in our Clinical Records Retention Policy. In summary:

• Adult clinical records: eight years from the final treatment or last clinical entry
• Child or young person's records: until the 25th birthday (or 26th if the patient was 17 when treatment ended)
• Booking enquiries that do not lead to treatment: three months from the last contact

Records may be kept longer where required by law, a contract, a claim or a specific clinical reason.

7. Your Rights

Under the UK GDPR, you have the right to:

• Access the personal information we hold about you
• Ask us to correct inaccurate information
• Ask us to delete your information in certain circumstances
• Object to or restrict certain uses of your information
• Receive your information in a portable format
• Withdraw consent where we rely on it

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us using the details below. We may need to verify your identity before responding. We aim to respond within one month.

If you are unhappy with how we handle your information, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO).

8. Changes to This Notice

We may update this notice from time to time. We will let you know of any significant changes. The current version will always be available on our website.