Practices typically hold two types of Information about you:

• Non-clinical information (your name, address etc…)
• Clinical information (what you talk to the doctor or nurse about in the privacy of the consulting room, plus any laboratory tests undertaken, diagnoses made or medicines you are prescribed).

Non-clinical information:

• The practice is required to pass on your non-clinical information to the PHO, its administration agencies and HealthPAC (the payment arm of the Ministry of Health) in order to obtain the funding that gives you subsidised care.

Clinical information:

• Our health care professionals (doctors & nurses) make notes of what you talk to them about.  These notes help them to provide good care for you (it is also a legal and ethical requirement that they do so).  This information is kept on the practice’s own computers (and/or paper records).  This information is not normally passed to anyone outside the practice.
• However, if you need a laboratory test or a prescription, or are referred to a specialist or hospital, some of your information will need to go to that other person or organisation, in order for them to be able to provide proper care for you.  Similarly, if you are part of some of our programmes (e.g. respiratory) some information will go to the PHO and the particular providers of the programmes, to help make sure these programmes are working well for you and other people.  You will be asked to consent for this when you are enrolled in any such programmes.
• Finally, this practice and PHO are part of a national quality improvement programme, called the PHO Performance Programme.  So that we can measure how well we are caring for you and compare our services with other PHOs, we need to electronically supply clinical information attached to your National Health index (NHI) number but without any details of your name or address.  This data will be used to produce reports for the District Health Board and Ministry of Health that do not identify you individually in any way.