GDPR and Privacy Policy

GENERAL DATA PROTECTION REGULATION

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) replaced existing data protection law on the 25th of  May 2018.
This EU Directive came into effect giving enhanced protection for consumers and creating new obligations for anyone who collect and store data on patients/clients.

What does GDPR change in relation to information stored?

GDPR gives you greater control over your personal information, so you may notice some small changes as we need signed consent on our patient information forms.
This is required during your treatment sessions.

Your Rights under GDPR include:

  • The right to access the personal information that we hold on you
  • The right to have inaccuracies in that information corrected
  • The right to have information on you deleted
  • The right to object
  • The right to have your personal information sent to you directly

We will not share your personal information with any third parties unless you have expressly asked and signed release for transfer of information. If we need to correspond with another Healthcare Practitioner on your behalf, e.g. your GP or a consultant, we will obtain your written consent in advance to do so.

If required by law we may be forced to disclose your personal information if such disclosure is necessary to protect our rights and/or to comply with a judicial proceeding, court order or legal process.
However, we will do what we can to ensure that your privacy rights continue to be protected.

For how long will GP Physical Therapy Clinic retain personal information?

Our insurance provider requires us to retain all records for a period of 7 years after the last appointment or visit, or in the case of minors, for 7 years after their 18th birthday. After 7 years have elapsed without use, files are destroyed.
Your personal information (inc. treatment notes) will be held in a secure filing system within a secure premises.

If you are unhappy with the way in which your personal data has been processed, you may, in the first instance email us directly. If you remain dissatisfied, then you have the right to apply directly to the Data Protection Commissioner, Canal House, Station Road, Portarlington, Co. Laois.

What kind of information do we retain:

We collect information and generate medical records when we assess and treat you for a various conditions. We store this information and details of successful treatment plans/ previous rehabilitation strategies in order to improve our understanding and inform future requirement, which is of benefit too if you return to us for training or with subsequent injury.

We may store information relating to any necessary rehabilitation plans or home exercise programmes if follow up was necessary, relating to any training or injury.
Information may relate to the following purposes:

  • Rehabilitation plans and advice regarding your training or recovery.
  • Content and details on appointments (clients).
  • Follow up on incoming information (emails or phone calls).
  • Contractual details such as receipts, invoices, reminders etc.
  • Any feedback relating to our services.

Changes to this Privacy Policy:

We reserve the right to amend this Privacy Statement at any time. The applicable version will always be found on this website. We encourage you to check this page occasionally to ensure that you are happy with any changes that may happen in the future.

We will notify you by email or post a notice on this website prior to any changes that significantly alter our privacy practices.

Website related privacy concerns:

Comments on posts -

If visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be linked to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. Your use of Gravatar relates to their service privacy policy available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/.
After approval of your comment, your Gravatar profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included therefore visitors to the website could download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Cookies

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select "Remember Me", your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
We bear no responsibility for any links or tracking associated with that embedded content if you choose to click and activate those external resources.

Analytics

In designing this website we use information gleaned from google analytics.
We have however for your privacy enabled IP address anonymization.

Google Analytics mainly uses first-party cookies to report on visitor (aka. user) interactions on Google Analytics customers’ websites. Users may disable cookies or delete any individual cookie. Learn more

In addition, Google Analytics supports an optional browser add-on that - once installed and enabled - disables measurement by Google Analytics for any site a user visits. Note that this add-on only disables Google Analytics measurement.

Where a site or app uses Google Analytics for Apps or the Google Analytics for Firebase SDKs, Google Analytics collects an app-instance identifier — a randomly generated number that identifies a unique installation of an App. Whenever a user resets their Advertising Identifier (Advertising ID on Android, and ID for Advertisers on iOS), the app-instance identifier is also reset.

Where sites or apps have implemented Google Analytics with other Google Advertising products, like AdWords, additional advertising identifiers may be collected. Users can opt-out of this feature and manage their settings for this cookie using the Ads SettingsLearn more

Google Analytics also collects Internet Protocol (IP) addresses to provide and protect the security of the service, and to give website owners a sense of which country, state, or city in the world their users come from (also known as "IP geolocation"). Google Analytics provides a method to mask IPs that are collected.

How long we retain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

What rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us.
You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
There is no charge if the records concerned contain only personal information provided, unless there are a significant number of records/ online posts in which case there will be administrative costs for search and retrieval, with such fees available on request.

Where we send online data

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.

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