Trust Board papers November 2012 - Barking Havering and ...

BACKGROUND
Information Governance (IG) is a framework that brings together best practice, standards
and requirements that apply to the handling of information. This includes sensitive and
personal information, of patients and employees as well as commercially sensitive
information.
Information Governance provides a way for employees to deal consistently with the many
different rules about how information is handled, including those set out in:
• The Data Protection Act 1998
• The common law duty of confidentiality
• The Confidentiality NHS Code of Practice
• The NHS Care Record Guarantee for England
• The Social Care Record Guarantee for England
• The international information security standard: ISO/IEC 27002: 2005
• The Information Security NHS Code of Practice
• The Records Management NHS Code of Practice
• The Freedom of Information Act 2000
• The Caldicott Report
This strategy sets out Barking Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust’s
(BHRUT’s) approach to providing a robust Information Governance framework. It is essential
that appropriate management structures, leadership and organisational processes are in
place to deliver successful information governance, and important the Information
Governance agenda is adequately resourced.
Information Governance sits alongside clinical and corporate governance in providing the
service users and other organisations with the assurance that personal and commercially
sensitive information is handled in a confidential and secure manner to appropriate legal,
ethical and quality standards.
The Information Governance strategy is monitored by the Connecting for Health (CfH)
Information Governance Toolkit. This is a performance tool produced by the Department of
Health (DH) which draws together the legal rules and central guidance set out above and
presents them in one place as a set of Information Governance requirements.
This document should be read in conjunction with the Information Governance Policy. The
Action Plan sets out a delivery of actions to satisfy the requirements.
PURPOSE
1. To ensure that patient and corporate data collected or created is of the best possible
quality.
Barking, Havering & Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust Page 2 of 9
Information Governance Strategy Version 1.3 Issued August 2012