Agenda and supporting papers - Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust

Item 13
Telephone conversations.
• On some wards telephone
conversations made by staff about
patients could be clearly heard by
patients and visitors in seating areas.
• The Head of Clinical Systems
Governance will review procedures on
wards with Nursing management and
the Caldicott Guardian.
• The correct procedures will be
communicated to ward staff and
overseen by the Caldicott Group
4. The Information Governance Toolkit (IGT) is now being overseen by the Health and Social Care
Information Centre (HSCIC) which replaced Connecting for Health. The HSCIC released Version
11 in early June13 without any significant change to the 45 requirements. The IG team are
preparing for the Baseline Submission at the end of July 13.
5. In tandem with the release of V11 of the IGT, the HSCIC have published new guidance on the
way that Trusts should report, manage and investigate Information Governance Serious Incidents
Requiring Investigation (SIRIs). From June 13 all Organisations processing health and adult
social care personal data are required to use a new online IG Incident Reporting Tool to report IG
SIRIs to the Department of Health, Information Commissioners Office (ICO) and other regulators
as appropriate.
6. The algorithm used to decide if an IG incident is a SIRI has altered. The Information Governance
Team is learning the new system. It is recognised that there is no simple definition of a serious
IG incident. What may at first appear to be of minor importance may, on further investigation, be
found to be serious and vice versa. Plymouth Hospitals Trust last reported an IG SIRI to the ICO
in January 2012. In the 2012/13 financial year the IG team dealt with 354 IG incidents none of
which were categorised as SIRI’s.
7. The IG Team now record all incidents that they deal with on Datix and are currently reviewing the
categories used to reflect the new HSCIC guidance. Figures will be available for the next Board
update. In addition, the team continue to scan the Datix system and flag those incidents with an
IG element.
8. Dame Fiona Caldicott has published the report of the recent review of Information Governance.
This is known as Caldicott2. The Caldicott Guardian will present the implications of this review to
the Executive team.
9. The original Caldicott report was written in 1997 when the health services were more paternalistic
and much less patient centred, now the public are a lot more concerned about what happens to
their information. Caldicot2 states that a re-balancing of sharing and protecting information is
urgently needed in the patients’ and service users’ interest.
10. The original Caldicott Principles still stand but have been updated with a 7 th principle being
added: “The duty to share information can be as important as the duty to protect patient
confidentiality”. Appropriate sharing of information is seen as important as maintaining
confidentiality.
11. The following Subject Access Requests have been made under the Data Protection Act for 2013
(as at 14/06/2013)
No of requests Disclosed after 40 Cumulative Total
days
January 24 3 24
February 16 5 40
March 13 3 53
April 13 4 66
May 25 None as at 14/06/13 91
4