All patients at the practice have a named accountable GP on their clinical record. Your named GP has overall responsibility for your care but you may see any GP of your choosing at the surgery.
If you wish to find out who your named GP is, please use our Contact form or telephone the surgery on 01638 666887.
My Care Record enables health and care professionals directly involved in your care to access information about you.
Providing you with:
Your GP, hospital, community health, mental health and social care teams may all hold important information about your care. We know that when information is made available between services in a more joined-up way, we can better meet your health and wellbeing needs.
We now have a common agreement that health and care organisations within our region will follow. We are calling this My Care Record. Where it is in place, professionals can access relevant information from other organisations that will help to deliver better care to you. For example, a doctor treating you in hospital or a nurse working in the community could view the information they need from your GP record.
Access to your records is made possible by several different types of secure technology. Information about you will only be accessed by health or care professionals who are directly involved in your care. Health and care professionals may access your records from different services to improve the care you receive as a whole.
In some areas, information from care records may also be used to help to plan and design how we deliver better services for you and the local population as a whole. In these cases, your name or any other recognisable information about you are not used so no one working with the information would be able to identify you.
My Care Record is a key part of wider work to provide more joined-up care, connecting people, services and systems. As more care providers develop the technologies to view records across services, the benefits will increase. More information, including answers to frequently asked questions and a list of the organisations that are taking part, can be found by visiting www.mycarerecord.org.uk.
We aim to keep our practice clean and tidy and offer a safe environment to our patients and staff. We endeavour to keep it clean and well maintained at all times.
If you have any concerns about cleanliness or infection control, please report these to our reception staff.
Our GPs and nursing staff follow our Infection Control Policy to ensure the care we deliver and the equipment we use is safe.
We take additional measures to ensure we maintain the highest standards:
Health Risk Screening or Risk stratification is a process GPs use to help them to identify and support patients with long-term conditions and to help prevent un-planned hospital admissions or reduce the risk of certain diseases developing such as type 2 diabetes. This is called risk stratification for case-finding.
Risk stratification tools use historic information about patients, such as age, gender, diagnoses and patterns of hospital attendance and admission collected by NHS England from NHS hospitals and community care services. This is linked to data collected in GP practices and analysed to produce a risk score.
Your GP will routinely conduct the risk stratification process outside of your GP appointment. This process is conducted electronically and without human intervention. The resulting report is then reviewed by a multidisciplinary team of staff within the Practice. This may result in contact being made with you if alterations to the provision of your care are identified.
The ICB has agreed with NHS England s251 support for the NHS Number, as an identifier from both NHS England and GP Practice data, to be used to enable this work to take place. The Data is sent directly into a risk stratification tool called Eclipse from NHS England /GP Practices to enable the data to be linked and processed as described above. GPs can identify individual patients from the risk stratified data when it is necessary to discuss the outcome and consider preventative care. Your GP will use computer-based algorithms or calculations to identify their registered patients who are at most risk. Once the data is within the tool ICB staff only have access to anonymised or aggregated data.
Suffolk and North East Essex Integrated Care Board (SNEEICB) also uses risk stratified data with pseudonymised (non-identifiable) data to understand the health needs of the local population to plan and commission the right services. This is called risk stratification for commissioning.
Different types of commissioning data are legally allowed to be used by different organisations within, or contracted to, the NHS. Information put into the risk stratification tools used by the ICB:
A Section 251 support approval (CAG 2-03(a)/2013) from the Secretary of State, through the Confidentiality Advisory Group of the Health Research Authority, enables the use of identifiable information about patients included in the datasets.
The practice processes this data internally. Data is also processed by Prescribing Services Ltd (Eclipse) on behalf of the practice. Data is processed by the North of England Commissioning Support Unit on behalf of the ICB.
You have a choice about whether you want your confidential patient information to be used in this way. If you are happy with this use of information you do not need to do anything. If you do not wish your data to be included in the risk stratification service you can choose to opt-out through the National Data Opt-Out process.
Where pseudonymised (non-identifiable) data is being used by the ICB, the National Data Opt-Out does not apply. The data is used in a format which does not directly identify you. You have the right to object to your information being used in this way; however, you should be aware that your objection may have a negative impact on the timely and proactive provision of your direct care. Should you choose to opt-out, please inform your GP practice who will apply an opt-out code to your record to ensure that your information is not included in the programme.
Please contact the Practice Manager to discuss how disclosure of your personal data can be limited.
2023/24
All GP practices are required to declare the mean earnings (eg average) for GPs working to deliver NHS services to patients at each practice.
The average pay for GPs working at Orchard House Surgery in the last financial year before tax and national insurance is £84,294
This is for 9 part time GPs who worked in the practice for more than 6 months.
It should be noted that the prescribed method for calculating earnings 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 judgement about GP earnings, nor to make any comparison with any other practice.
Information about the GPs and the practice required for disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 can be made available to the public.
There are seven classes of information:
This covers any recorded organisational information such as reports, policies or strategies, that is held by a public authority in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and by UK-wide public authorities based in Scotland, however, it does not cover personal information such as patient records which are covered by the Data Protection Act 2018.
Public authorities include government departments, local authorities, the NHS, state schools and police forces.
This is enforced by the Information Commissioner who regulates both the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the Data Protection Act 2018.
All requests for such information should be made to the practice manager.
Information about your health and care helps the NHS to improve your individual care, speed up diagnosis, plan your local services and research new treatments.
In May 2018, the strict rules about how this data can and cannot be used were strengthened. The NHS is committed to keeping patient information safe and always being clear about how it is used.
You can choose whether your confidential patient information is used for research and planning. For more information about your data rights please visit the Your Data Matters campaign at www.ico.org.uk.
Your health and care information is used to improve your individual care. It is also used to help us research new treatments, decide where to put GP clinics and plan for the number of doctors and nurses in your local hospital. Wherever possible we try to use data that does not identify you, but sometimes it is necessary to use your confidential patient information.
Confidential patient information identifies you and says something about your health, care or treatment. You would expect this information to be kept private. Information that only identifies you, like your name and address, is not considered confidential patient information and may still be used, for example, to contact you if your GP practice is merging with another.
It is used by the NHS, local authorities, university and hospital researchers, medical colleges and pharmaceutical companies researching new treatments.
You can choose to opt out of sharing your confidential patient information for research and planning. There may still be times when your confidential patient information is used, for example, during an epidemic where there might be a risk to you or to other people’s health. You can also still consent to take part in a specific research project.
No, your confidential patient information will still be used for your individual care. Choosing to opt out will not affect your care and treatment. You will still be invited for screening services, such as screenings for bowel cancer.
You do not need to do anything if you are happy about how your confidential patient information is used. If you do not want your confidential patient information to be used for research and planning, you can choose to opt out securely online or through a telephone service.
You can change your choice at any time. To find out more or to make your choice visit www.nhs.uk/your-nhs-data-matters or call 0300 303 5678.
The practice complies with data protection and access to medical records legislation, the Data Protection Act 2018. Identifiable information about you will be shared with others in the following circumstances:
If you do not wish anonymous information about you to be used in such a way, please use our Contact the Practice form and let us know.
Reception and administration staff require access to your medical records in order to do their jobs. These members of staff are bound by the same rules of confidentiality as the medical staff.
The surgery prides itself in maintaining professional standards. For certain examinations during consultations, an impartial observer (a chaperone) will be required.
This impartial observer will be a practice nurse or health care assistant who is familiar with the procedure and be available to reassure and raise any concerns on your behalf.
If a nurse in unavailable at the time of your consultation then your examination may be rescheduled for another time.
You are free to decline any examination or chose an alternative examiner or chaperone. You may also request a chaperone for any examination or consultation if one is not offered to you. The GP may not undertake an examination if a chaperone is declined.
The role of a chaperone is to:
In accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018 and Access to Health Records Act 1990, patients may request to see their medical records.
Such requests should be made through the practice manager by using our Contact the Practice form and may be subject to an administration charge.
No information will be released without the patient consents unless we are legally obliged to do so.