Privacy and Quality Policy

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Who we are

Cambridge Perfusion Services provides a dedicated perfusion service to Royal Papworth Hospital and James Cook Hospital as part of the clinical cardiac theatre team. As part of our service we collect, store and process sensitive information about patients that has already been collected by Royal Papworth Hospital and James Cook Hospital as part of the clinical care pathway. As a company we are committed to maintaining the trust and confidence of Royal Papworth Hospital and James Cook Hospital in regard to how we handle patient’s clinical information. We have a clear process of what information is collected and why, how it is used, who it is shared with, where is stored and how it is disposed of after our use for it has expired. In this Privacy Notice we have provided details of how we manage our collected information, and how keeping that information secure is at the forefront of everything we do. Our full Data Protection policies are available to view at any time, please just contact a member of our team.

Types of data we collect

We collect Patients’ names, dates of birth and hospital numbers as part of our clinical record of activity, and also for billing purposes. We use this information to keep a clinical record of activity about what care we have provided for each individual patient and when. This allows us to have a memory of patient care, which we use to inform us in our clinical decision-making alongside our medical colleagues. As a private company, we also need to know what equipment has been provided to each patient during their treatment for the purpose of providing individual, itemised billing to Papworth Hospital and James Cook University Hospital. Our legal basis for collecting this information is in line with GDPR articles 6 (1b) and 9 (2h). 

Information is most commonly acquired by way of a patient addressograph and so the individual NHS number, gender and patient address is also included. While this may seem excessive because we do not use this information directly, we feel collecting addressographs is by far the safest way to obtain patient information as this decreases transcription errors and avoids us getting anything wrong.

No information we collect is obtained directly from patients themselves and we require nothing in addition to what each patient has already provided to Royal Papworth Hospital NHS Trust or James Cook University Hospital as part of their treatment. As such, we hold no unique information to that already included in patient notes. 

Third parties 

The only time we will share information that we hold about patients is in a clinical setting at Royal Papworth Hospital or James Cook Hospital, for the purposes of direct clinical care. 

We won’t ever share sensitive patient information with any commercial third parties, for any reason. Any and all information we supply outside of the clinical setting at Royal Papworth Hospital or James Cook Hospital (for example VAD information to Heartware) is anonymised using patient initials and hospital numbers. 

Access to personal information

Anyone is entitled to view any information that we hold about them specifically. As a first port-of-call requests should usually be submitted to Royal Papworth Hospital or James Cook Hospital themselves, as we hold no unique information. If, however, an individual contacts Cambridge Perfusion Services directly we will of course provide information to them. We have a Subject Access Request policy for just this purpose, details of which can be obtained from the Perfusion Department. Our Data Protection Officer is Nick Maggs and he can be reached either at 01223 638415 or by email at nick@cambridgeperfusion.com. Please be aware that we will notify Royal Papworth Hospital or James Cook Hospital that we are supplying the information, simply to inform them of the request; it will not affect your application or the information we supply to you. 

Disposal of sensitive data

Cambridge Perfusion Services have a clear policy on how long and why we need to keep each piece of information; that might be for clinical, billing or legal reasons – and after that we will dispose of the information we hold about patients through the Royal Papworth Hospital or James Cook University Hospital secure shredding service. If you wish to see this policy in full please contact any member of our team. Of course, original patient notes will still be held by the hospital for much longer periods, along with any clinical records generated by perfusion, but these will be held securely by Royal Papworth Hospital or James Cook University Hospital themselves. 

Changes to this privacy notice

This Privacy Notice will be reviewed annually, or if any specific changes occur in the way we collect, store or manage our sensitive data.