Privacy Officer Group

To comply with Information Governance standards, every organisation must now have a nominated member of staff responsible for monitoring patient record retrievals and patient data. This person is known as the Privacy Officer.

To ensure appropriate governance of actions is maintained, your practice designated Privacy Officer(s) receives the following in Daybook or Tasks:

• A task requiring action - A full alert:

  • When patient data is deleted.

  • When a transferred out patient record is accessed, more than 28 days after being deducted.

• An announcement - A warning:

  • When a transferred out patient record is accessed less than 29 days after being deducted.

  • When a transferred out patient record is accessed as a result of running a report.

The Privacy Officer(s) must check announcements and tasks of this type to ensure the actions are valid and, where a task is raised, select Complete to confirm it has been checked.

The information provided is:

• Date and time of the action.

• The staff member logged on.

• The reason entered.

Maintaining the Privacy Officer Group

A Privacy Officer group is automatically created in Control Panel. The Privacy Officer group cannot be empty and must contain at least one member of staff:

• In England, it is automatically populated with any staff members with the following RBAC roles:

  • ROL020 Practice Manager.

  • ROL001 Senior Partner.

• In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the Privacy Officer group is populated with staff members with the following roles, as set up in Control Panel - File Maintenance - Staff - Professional - Role:

  • Practice Manager.

  • Senior Partner.

To add additional Privacy Officer(s) to this group:

1. Log on to Vision 3 as a system administrator.

2. Select Management Tools – Control Panel and then File Maintenance.

3. Select Staff Groups.

4. Select Expand to expand the System folder .

5. Right click on the $Privacyofficer group and select Add Staff Member(s):

6. From the Staff Member – Add list, highlight your Privacy Officer(s) and select OK.

   Training Tip – To select multiple staff members, press the CTRL key and highlight each staff member.

Please note:

• If you try to remove all members of the Privacy Officer group the warning 'This group must contain at least one user' displays.

• You should carefully consider who the designated Privacy officer(s)are, therefore the Add All option is unavailable when you right click on the $Privacyofficer group.