• 16 St John Street, Mansfield NG18 1QJ

Data protection privacy notice for patients

In providing your dental care and treatment, we will ask for information about you and your health. Occasionally, we may receive information from other providers who have been involved in providing your care. This privacy notice describes the type of personal information we hold, why we hold it and what we do with it.

About us

We are The Dental Care Centre operating at 16 St John Street, Mansfield, Notts, NG18 1QJ.

Ravi Nathwani is responsible for keeping secure the information about you that we hold. Those at the practice who have access to your information include dentists and other dental professionals involved with your care and treatment, and the reception staff responsible for the management and administration of the practice.

Our data protection officer, Mark Walker, ensures that the practice complies with data protection requirements to ensure that we collect, use, store and dispose of your information responsibly.

You can contact our data protection officer, Mark Walker, by email at reception@mansfielddentalcare.co.uk or by phone on 01623 622026.

Information that we hold     

We can only keep and use information for specific reasons set out in the law. If we want to keep and use information about your health, we can only do so in particular circumstances. Below, we describe the information we hold and why, and the lawful basis for collecting and using it.

Contact details

We hold personal information about you including your name, date of birth, national insurance number, NHS number, address, telephone number and email address. This information allows us to fulfil our contract with you to provide appointments. We will also use the information to send you reminders and recall appointments as we have a legitimate interest to ensure your continuing care and to make you aware of our services. 

Dental records

We hold information about your dental and general health, including

  • Clinical records made by dentists and other dental professionals involved with your care and treatment
  • X-rays, clinical photographs, digital scans of your mouth and teeth, and study models
  • Medical and dental histories
  • Treatment plans and consent
  • Notes of conversations with you about your care
  • Dates of your appointments
  • Details of any complaints you have made and how these complaints were dealt with
  • Correspondence with you and other health professionals or institutions.

We collect and use this information to allow us to fulfil our contract with you to discuss your treatment options and provide dental care that meets your needs. We also use this information for the legitimate interest of ensuring the quality of the treatment we provide. 

Financial information

We hold information about the fees we have charged, the amounts you have paid and some payment details. This information forms part of our contractual obligation to you to provide dental care and allows us to meet legal financial requirements.

Where your dental care is provided under the terms of the NHS, we are required to complete statutory forms to allow payments to be processed. This is an NHS requirement. 

How we use your information

To provide you with the dental care and treatment that you need, we require up-to-date and accurate information about you.

We will share your information with the NHS and/or name of private dental plan provider in connection with your dental treatment.

We may contact you to conduct patient surveys or to find out if you are happy with the treatment you received for quality control purposes.

We will seek your preference for how we contact you about your dental care. Our usual methods are telephone, email or letter.

We have CCTV at the practice for the purposes of patient and staff safety. Please see our policy for CCTV for further details.

Sharing information

Your information is normally used only by those working at the practice but there may be instances where we need to share it – for example, with:

  • Your doctor
  • The hospital or community dental services or other health professionals caring for you
  • Specialist dental or medical services to which we may refer you
  • NHS payment authorities
  • The Department for Work and Pensions and its agencies, where you are claiming exemption or remission from NHS charges
  • Dental laboratories
  • Debt collection agencies
  • Private dental schemes of which you are a member.

We will only disclose your information on a need-to-know basis and will limit any information that we share to the minimum necessary. We will let you know in advance if we send your medical information to another medical provider and we will give you the details of that provider at that time.

In certain circumstances or if required by law, we may need to disclose your information to a third party not connected with your health care, including HMRC or other law enforcement or government agencies.

Keeping your information safe

We store your personal information securely on our practice computer system and in a manual filing system. Your information cannot be accessed by those who do not work at the practice; only those working at the practice have access to your information. They understand their legal responsibility to maintain confidentiality and follow practice procedures to ensure this.

We take precautions to ensure security of the practice premises, the practice filing systems and computers.

We use high-quality specialist dental software to record and use your personal information safely and effectively. Our computer system has a secure audit trail and we back-up information routinely.

We use cloud computing facilities for storing some of your information. The practice has a rigorous agreement with our provider to ensure that we meet the obligations described in this policy and that we keep your information securely.

We keep your records for 11 years after the date of your last visit to the Practice or until you reach the age of 25 years, whichever is the longer. At your request, we will delete non-essential information (for example some contact details) before the end of this period.

Access to your information and other rights

You have a right to access the information that we hold about you and to receive a copy. We do not usually charge you for copies of your information; if we pass on a charge, we will explain the reasons.

You can also request us to

If we are relying on your consent to use your personal information for a particular purpose, you may withdraw your consent at any time and we will stop using your information for that purpose.

All requests should be made by email to our data protection officer at reception@mansfielddentalcare.co.uk

If you do not agree

If you do not wish us to use your personal information as described, you should discuss the matter with your dentist. If you object to the way that we collect and use your information, we may not be able to continue to provide your dental care.

If you have any concerns about how we use your information and you do not feel able to discuss it with your dentist or anyone at the practice, you should contact The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF (0303 123 1113 or 01625 545745).

Date: 21/05/2023

Review date: 21/05/2023

Bariatric Patients Policy

We are currently unable to provide a safe service to patients over the weight of 120kg (19 stone). This is because the ground floor dental chair is only suitable to a maximum weight of 120kg. Anything over this weight deems the chair unsafe and could lead to the chair collapsing or could interfere with us performing treatment safely, particularly in the event of a medical emergency.

New medical histories are to be completed for all patients currently on our system, with a question regarding patient weight, and new patients will be asked to provide this information when they register. In the event of a patient informing a staff member, the information will be passed in confidence to the dentist.

We apologise for the inconvenience this may cause and assure you we are looking into alternatives for our bariatric patients, including sourcing funding for changing the ground floor surgery. In the meantime, we are able to offer our bariatric patients a dental examination, and can refer to the bariatric service at Chapel En Le Frith for treatment as our nearest treatment centre.

Feedback / Complaints Policy

We strive to please all of our patients. We would love to hear positive feedback, but if you feel that your visit was unsatisfactory, then we have a thorough complaints procedure.

We would request that you either write to our Practice Manager, and email us (reception@mansfielddentalcare.co.uk) or write to us (The Dental Care Centre operating at 16 St John Street, Mansfield, Notts, NG18 1QJ). If you feel that our response to your complaint has not addressed your concerns, you can write to NHS Nottingham and Nottinghamshire:-

Telephone: 0115 8839570
By post: Patient Experience Team, Civic Centre, Arnot Hill Park, Nottingham Road, Arnold, Nottingham, NG5 6LU
Email: nnicb-nn.patientexperience@nhs.net

or the Care Quality Commission. If you feel that either of these have not answered your concerns, then you can contact the Parliamentary Ombudsman to further raise concerns.