Practice Policies & Patient Information
Our dedicated team are here to treat those minor ailments that occur as well as providing specialist management of long-term conditions and clinics covering a wide range of healthcare issues.
Accessing someone else’s information
As a parent, family member or carer, you may be able to access services for someone else. We call this having proxy access. We can set this up for you if you are both registered with us.
To requests proxy access:
- collect a proxy access form from reception from 10am to 6pm
Linked profiles in your NHS account
Once proxy access is set up, you can access the other person’s profile in your NHS account, using the NHS App or website.
The NHS website has information about using linked profiles to access services for someone else.
Electronic Prescribing Service
The Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) is an NHS service. It gives you the chance to change how your GP sends your prescription to the place you choose to get your medicines or appliances from.
What does this mean for you?
If you collect your repeat prescriptions from your GP you will not have to visit your GP practice to pick up your paper prescription. Instead, your GP will send it electronically to the place you choose, saving you time.
You will have more choice about where to get your medicines from because they can be collected from a pharmacy near to where you live, work or shop.
You may not have to wait as long at the pharmacy as there will be time for your repeat prescriptions to be ready before you arrive.
Is this service right for you?
Yes, if you have a stable condition and you:
- don’t want to go to your GP practice every time to collect your repeat prescription.
- collect your medicines from the same place most of the time or use a prescription collection service now.
It may not be if you:
- don’t get prescriptions very often.
- pick up your medicines from different places.
How can you use EPS?
You need to choose a place for your GP practice to electronically send your prescription to. This is called nomination. You can choose:
- a pharmacy. a dispensing appliance contractor (if you use one).
- your dispensing GP practice (if you are eligible).
Ask any pharmacy or dispensing appliance contractor that offers EPS or your GP practice to add your nomination for you. You don’t need a computer to do this.
Can I change my nomination or cancel it and get a paper prescription?
Yes you can. If you don’t want your prescription to be sent electronically tell your GP. If you want to change or cancel your nomination speak to any pharmacist or dispensing appliance contractor that offers EPS, or your GP practice. Tell them before your next prescription is due or your prescription may be sent to the wrong place.
Is EPS reliable, secure and confidential?
Yes. Your electronic prescription will be seen by the same people in GP practices, pharmacies and NHS prescription payment and fraud agencies that see your paper prescription now. Sometimes dispensers may see that you have nominated another dispenser. For example, if you forget who you have nominated and ask them to check or, if you have nominated more than one dispenser. Dispensers will also see all the items on your reorder slip if you are on repeat prescriptions.
For more information please visit the NHS Choices website .
GDPR and Privacy
GP Earnings
All GP practices are required to declare the mean earnings (e.g. average pay) for GPs working to deliver NHS services to patients at each practice. The required disclosure is shown below.
The average pay for GPs working in Newham Medical Centre in the last financial year (2018 / 19) was £65,749 before tax and National Insurance. This is for 2 full-time GP, 1 salaried GP, /locum GPs and who worked in the practice for over 6 months.
However, it should be noted that the prescribed method for calculating earning is potentially misleading because it takes no account of how much time doctors spend working in the practice, and should not be used to form any judgment about GP earnings, nor to make any comparison with any other practice.
Sharing Your Medical Record
Increasingly, patient medical data is shared e.g. between GP surgeries and District Nursing, in order to give clinicians access to the most up to date information when attending patients.
The systems we operate require that any sharing of medical information is consented to by patients beforehand. Patients must consent to sharing of the data held by a health provider out to other health providers and must also consent to which of the other providers can access their data.
e.g. it may be necessary to share data held in GP practices with district nurses but the local podiatry department would not need to see it to undertake their work. In this case, patients would allow the surgery to share their data, they would allow the district nurses to access it but they would not allow access by the podiatry department. In this way access to patient data is under patients’ control and can be shared on a ‘need to know’ basis.
Summary Care Record
There is a new Central NHS Computer System called the Summary Care Record (SCR). The Summary Care Record is meant to help emergency doctors and nurses help you when you contact them when the surgery is closed. Initially, it will contain just your medications and allergies.
Later on as the central NHS computer system develops, (known as the ‘Summary Care Record’ – SCR), other staff who work in the NHS will be able to access it along with information from hospitals, out of hours services, and specialists letters that may be added as well.
Your information will be extracted from practices such as ours and held on central NHS databases.
As with all new systems there are pros and cons to think about. When you speak to an emergency doctor you might overlook something that is important and if they have access to your medical record it might avoid mistakes or problems, although even then, you should be asked to give your consent each time a member of NHS Staff wishes to access your record, unless you are medically unable to do so.
On the other hand, you may have strong views about sharing your personal information and wish to keep your information at the level of this practice. Connecting for Health (CfH), the government agency responsible for the Summary Care Record have agreed with doctors’ leaders that new patients registering with this practice should be able to decide whether or not their information is uploaded to the Central NHS Computer System.
For existing patients it is different in that it is assumed that you want your record uploaded to the Central NHS Computer System unless you actively opt out.