Purpose and lawful basis for processing
The purpose of the project is for both health and social care systems to work closer together. Different departments within health and social care use different IT systems to track patients, meaning not everyone supporting a patient knows who else is involved with any individual patient. The purpose of this project is to bring those systems closer together so that care can be coordinated across professions. For example, Therapist will know if any patients has any home care and can discuss how to work together to rehabilitate a patient on discharge. Social workers will know whom the District nurses involved with specific patients and can identify any concerns about the patient’s welfare. The fragmented nature of the IT systems currently used means that information needed to make critical decisions is not always readily available to key people that could potentially work together.
The lawful basis we rely on to process personal data is Article 6(1)(e) of the UK GDPR, which allows us to process personal data when this is necessary to perform our public tasks, in this case to deliver social care under the Social Services and Wellbeing (Wales) Act 2014.
For special category (in this case Health data) the lawful basis is Article 9(2)(h) of the UK GDPR i.e processing is necessary for the purposes of preventive or occupational medicine, for the assessment of the working capacity of the employee, medical diagnosis, the provision of health or social care or treatment or the management of health or social care systems.
What we need
The data collected from health and social care systems, will be core identifiable data (Name, date of birth, postcode, address and NHS Number). These data sets will identify which systems have a profile for any patient in hospital who is over 18 years old. A report will be created to show which profession has been supporting the patient. It will not share any diagnostic Information other than notifying which professions works with patients admitted to hospital . It will also identify the professional who has been involved in that patient’s life by name. The report will be no more than a trigger for professionals to identify each other and to hold conversations a patients discharge plan post admission. Patients not known to any system will also be displayed, and a conversation between community and secondary care about the discharge plan can take place. When the patient has no need for any community intervention they will be taken off the report.
Why we need it
Currently Community Health and care Professionals do not know which patients are receiving care from other professionals. This means the care given to patients in the Community is not coordinated and as efficient as it could be. This data matching will give us opportunity to organise better care as both Health and social will work together for the benefit of the citizen.
What we do with it
We will match the identifiable data between Health and social records and create a report for each Community Resource Team for them to plan discharges with the hospital. The personal data will be erased once the patient has been discharged. Likewise, if the patient has had no historical support and does not need any intervention to be discharged, the data will be erased from the report.
How long we keep it
The ‘match’ will be held as long as you are a patient in any Community or general hospital, or until we know that the patients doesn’t need support to leave.
How to get more information?
For more information, see the Information Commissioner's Office (opens in new tab)