1.   INTRODUCTION  

This privacy notice provides you with details of how we collect and process your personal data through your use of our site https://surreyacupunctureclinic.co.uk/

By providing us with your data, you warrant to us that you are over 13 years of age.   

Surrey Acupuncture Clinic is the data controller and we are responsible for your personal data (referred to as “we”, “us” or “our” in this privacy notice).

Contact Details: nuala@surreyacupunctureclinic.co.uk

2.  WHAT DATA DO WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU, FOR WHAT PURPOSE AND ON WHAT GROUND WE PROCESS IT 

Personal data means any information capable of identifying an individual. It does not include anonymised data.

We may process the following categories of personal data about you:

Communication Data that includes any communication that you send to us whether that be through the contact form on our website, through email, text, social media messaging, social media posting or any other communication that you send us. We process this data for the purposes of communicating with you, for record keeping and for the establishment, pursuance or defence of legal claims. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interests which in this case are to reply to communications sent to us, to keep records and to establish, pursue or defend legal claims.

Customer Data that includes data relating to any purchases of goods and/or services such as your name, title, billing address, delivery address email address, phone number, contact details, purchase details and your card details. We process this data to supply the goods and/or services you have purchased and to keep records of such transactions. Our lawful ground for this processing is the performance of a contract between you and us and/or taking steps at your request to enter into such a contract.

User Data that includes data about how you use our website and any online services together with any data that you post for publication on our website or through other online services. We process this data to operate our website and ensure relevant content is provided to you, to ensure the security of our website, to maintain back- ups of our website and/or databases and to enable publication and administration of our website, other online services and business. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interests which in this case are to enable us to properly administer our website and our business.

Technical Data: we do not track your use of our website and we do not have an analytics tracking system or pixel setup.

3.  THE TYPE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION WE COLLECT :

We may collect data about you by you providing the data directly to us (for example by filling in forms on our site or by sending us emails). We currently collect and process the following information:

Personal identifiers, contacts and characteristics (for example, name and contact details)

Appointment dates and times

Your presenting complaint and symptoms reported by you

Any relevant medical and family history you have told us

Your GP’s name and address

Our clinical findings about your health and wellbeing

A record of any treatment given and details of progress

Any information and advice that we have given

Any decisions made in conjunction with you

Accident records for any patients, visitors or staff

Any adverse incident occurring

Records of your consent to treatment

How we get the personal information and why we have it

Most of the personal information we process is provided to us directly by you for one of the following reasons:

We use the information that you have given us in order to:

We use your name, address, telephone number and email address to make and rearrange appointments. We are unable to send or receive encrypted emails so you should be aware that any emails we send or receive may not be protected in transit. We will also monitor any emails sent to us, including file attachments, for viruses or malicious software. Please be aware that you have a responsibility to ensure that any email you send us is within the bounds of the law.

Some patients and prospective patients tell us about their medical conditions and medication by email. We are unable to send or receive encrypted emails so you should be aware that any emails we send or receive may not be protected in transit. We will also monitor any emails sent to us, including file attachments, for viruses or malicious software. Please be aware that you have a responsibility to ensure that any email you send us is within the bounds of the law.

We keep a permanent attendance register which records all appointments for patients attending our clinic to keep a record of when you were treated for tax purposes and to secure potential evidence in the event of a criminal prosecution, civil litigation, insurance claim or complaint to my regulatory bodies, the Association of Acupuncture Clinicians & The British Acupuncture Council.

We may use your date of birth to help identify patients with the same name to avoid mistakes being made as to safe and appropriate treatment, for identification purposes if referring a patient to another health practitioner, and for identification purposes if writing to a registered medical practitioner so that they correctly identify the patient.

We use your presenting complaint and symptoms reported by you for the purposes of making a full traditional diagnosis, formulating treatment strategy and treatment planning.

We use any relevant medical and family history you have told us for making a traditional diagnosis, formulating treatment strategy and treatment planning.

We use your GP’s name and address in the event that we need to contact your GP including in an emergency and because it is a mandatory requirement in the Association of Acupuncture Clinicians and The British Acupuncture Council’s Codes of Professional Conduct.

We use our clinical findings about your health and wellbeing for making a traditional diagnosis, and formulating treatment strategy and treatment planning.

We keep a record of and refer to that record of any treatment given and details of progress of your case, including reviews of treatment planning to enable us to: review the traditional diagnosis, treatment strategy and planning; and to secure evidence in the event of criminal proceedings, civil litigation, an insurance claim or complaint.

We record and use any information and advice that we have given, especially when referring patients to any other health professional (after discussion with, and permission from you) to help you to receive the most appropriate treatment and to secure evidence in the event of criminal proceedings, civil litigation, an insurance claim or complaint.

We record any decisions made in conjunction with you to help you to receive the most appropriate treatment and to secure evidence in the event of criminal proceedings, civil litigation, an insurance claim or complaint.

We keep accident records for any patients, visitors or staff who are involved in accidents at our clinic in accordance with UK Health and Safety legislation including the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR) to comply with the law and to secure evidence in the event of criminal proceedings, civil litigation, an insurance claim or complaint.

In the event of an adverse incident occurring to any of our patients we report the matter to the Association of Acupuncture Clinicians or The British Acupuncture Council and our insurance company to enable the insurance company to deal with any potential claims and to help the Association of Acupuncture Clinicians and The British Acupuncture Council to develop its safe practice guidelines, as well as providing research data and information for the AAC insurers and other interested parties.

Where relevant we maintain records of the patient’s consent to treatment, or the consent of their next-of-kin in order to be able to prove that the patient (and/or parent/guardian/next of kin) has given informed consent to treatment to secure evidence in the event of a civil claim, criminal prosecution, insurance claim or complaint.

Under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the lawful bases we rely on for processing this information are:

(a) Your consent. You are able to remove your consent at any time. You can do this by contacting me on the details given above.

(b) We have a legal obligation.

(c) We have a legitimate interest.

We may collect data about you by you providing the data directly to us (for example by filling in forms on our site or by sending us emails). We may automatically collect certain data from you as you use our website by using cookies and similar technologies. Please see our cookie policy for more details about this.

4. MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS 

Our lawful ground of processing your personal data to send you marketing communications is either your consent or our legitimate interests (namely to grow our business eg if you sign up for a newsletter.)  

5.  DISCLOSURES OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA  

We may have to share your personal data with the parties set out below:

We are subject to the provisions of the General Data Protection Regulations that protect your personal data. Where we transfer your data to third parties outside of the UK, we will ensure that certain safeguards are in place to ensure a similar degree of security for your personal data.

6.  DATA SECURITY  

We have put in place security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used, altered, disclosed, or accessed without authorisation.  

We have procedures in place to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach if we are legally required to.

7.  DATA RETENTION  

How we store your personal information

Your information is securely stored online, there are no paper copies.

We keep your information for 7 years after your last appointment, in accordance with the AAC/BacCs Code of professional Conduct. We will then dispose your information by deleting your files.

We use website cookies to improve user experience of our website by enabling our website to ‘remember’ users, either for the duration of their visit – using a ‘session cookie’ – or for repeat visits – using a ‘persistent cookie’.

Our website search is powered by WordPress. Search queries and results are logged anonymously to help us improve our website and search functionality. No user-specific data is collected by us or any third party.

We use a third party service, YinYang Hosting, to host this website. For more information about how Siteground processes data, please go to their Privacy Policy.

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

When deciding what the correct time is to keep the data for we look at its amount, nature and sensitivity, potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure, the processing purposes, if these can be achieved by other means and legal requirements.

For tax purposes the law requires us to keep basic information about our customers (including Contact, Identity, Financial and Transaction Data) for six years after they stop being customers.

8.  YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS  

 Under data protection laws you have rights in relation to your personal data that include the right to request access, correction, erasure, restriction, transfer, to object to processing, to portability of data and (where the lawful ground of processing is consent) to withdraw consent.

You can see more about these rights at:

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/individual-rights

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please email us at nuala@surreyacupunctureclinic.co.uk You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive or refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you.

If you are not happy with any aspect of how we collect and use your data, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We should be grateful if you would contact us first if you do have a complaint so that we can try to resolve it for you.

 09. THIRD-PARTY LINKS  

This website may include links to third-party websites (eg other websites with acupuncture related information,) plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit.

10. COOKIES  

You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this website may become inaccessible or not function properly. For more information about the cookies we use, please see our cookie policy