Data Privacy & Protection Policy

INTRODUCTION

We are committed to safeguarding the privacy of our website visitors and patients. This policy sets out how Dr Cinzia Pezzolesi, or (“The Practice”) uses and protects any information that you provide when you use this website or consume our services.

The Practice is committed to ensuring that your privacy and data are protected. Should we ask you to provide certain information by which you can be identified when using this website, then you can be assured that it will only be used in accordance with this policy.

The Practice may change this policy from time to time by updating this page. You should check this page from time to time to ensure that you are happy with any changes. This policy has been effective since 2014.

WHY THIS POLICY EXISTS

This policy describes how personal data and privacy is managed and protected to meet The Practice’s data protection standards and to comply with; i) the UK law and EU regulations for data protection; and ii) the British Psychological Society practice standards.

This policy outlines The Practice’s commitment to:

  • Comply with data protection law and follow good practice.
  • Protect the rights of staff and patients.
  • Maintaining transparency about how it stores and processes individuals’ data
  • Protect itself and its data subjects from the risks of a data breach.

WHAT WE COLLECT

In the course of normal business operation we typically collect information such as:

i) Existing patients:

  • Name, age, gender;
  • Contact information including home address, contact telephone, email address;
  • Optionally information around the nature of the work they do;
  • Summary of their mental health condition;
  • Therapy notes
  • Any consultation scheduling / booking records.

ii) Website visitors:

  • Transient information about your visits to and use of our website. Which may include visitor ip address, ip geographical location, browser type and version inferred from the webpage requests metadata as well as operating system, referral source, length of visit, page views and website navigation paths;
  • Information that you voluntarily provide to us when registering to book an appointment online through our website. Which would include name, email address, telephone number and optionally home address;
  • Information that you voluntarily provide to us for the purpose of subscribing to our newsletters or online tools which includes name and email address;
  • Information that you voluntarily post to our website for publication on the internet (including name, content of your posts and email address).

WHAT WE DO WITH THE INFORMATION WE GATHER

Information we gather via website visitors we require to understand your needs and provide you with a better service, and in particular for the following reasons:

Facilitate an online booking service.
Offer our website visitors and/or patients a positive experience through a digital channel to communicate with us. And subsequently to help us continue improving that customer experience.

PROTECTIVE MEASURES

We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online. To outline some of the measures we use:

  • Stringent logical access controls. Including use of strong authentication mechanisms and strong passwords.
  • Use of application firewalls to protect the website.
  • Regular review of system security configuration.
  • Regularly updated Anti-malware controls on website systems and end-user devices.
  • Implementation of need-to-know principles.
  • Staff awareness and vetting.
  • Careful selection and use of web hosting supplier that complies with EU / US privacy shield regulations and is independently audited.
  • Regular data backups of patients’ records and business systems.
  • Secure physical premises and enclosures for storing computing equipment holding patients’ data and backups.
  • Periodic consultation with cybersecurity specialists to ensure ongoing uphold of security posture.

HOW WE USE COOKIES

A cookie is a small file which asks permission to be placed on your computer’s hard drive. Once you agree, the file is added and the cookie helps analyse web traffic or lets you know when you visit a particular site. Cookies allow web applications to respond to you as an individual. The web application can tailor its operations to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences.

We use traffic log cookies to identify which pages are being used. This helps us analyse data about web page traffic and improve our website in order to tailor it to customer needs. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes. The specific cookies we use for that purpose are Google Analytics cookies; i) _gat; ii) _gid; and iii)_ga. Descriptions of those cookies can be found <here>. The cookies are First Party and contain only anonymised identifiers. Another cookie we use is the PHPSESSID temporary cookie which is used to establish a user session and to pass state data. As the PHPSESSID cookie has no timed expiry, it disappears when the client is closed.

Overall, cookies help us provide you with a better website, by enabling us to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not. A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us.

Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. This won’t prevent you from taking full advantage of the website. The only time the site functionality may be affected by the disablement of cookies is when attempting to make an online booking whilst having PHPSESSIONID cookie disabled.

LINKS TO OTHER WEBSITES

Our website may contain links to other websites of interest. However, once you have used these links to leave our site, you should note that we do not have any control over that other website. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such sites and such sites are not governed by this privacy statement. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.

CONTROLLING YOUR INFORMATION

This part is simple in our case. We DO NOT and WOULD NOT illicitly sell, share, disclose or lease your personal information to any 3rd party whatsoever.

We would only consider sharing of personal and medical information under strict consent from the data subject if required for further medical purposes with other medical organisations or practitioners.

If you have any concerns about your data or believe that any information we are holding on you is incorrect or incomplete, please contact us as soon as possible through our enquiry form in the contact page on this website. We will promptly address any concerns or observations.