At certain time, bulk mailings are required to be sent out to large numbers of patients. Examples of this are invitations to flu clinics or in the case of a new doctor starting at the practice. Newent Doctors Practice uses a data processing company called DocMail to handle some mailings to patients. This is to prevent time being taken up with the high level of administrative work required to send out mail to large numbers of patients, which could impact on our service to patients. This is permissible under guidance from both the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and the Department of Health (DoH) subject to the provisions of the Data Protection Act.
The surgery has strictly adhered to this guidance in setting up the partnership with DocMail.
- The sractice remains the data controller and as such has the responsibility for ensuring compliance with the provisions of the Act. DocMails role is that of a data processor and they do not take on the role of ensuring compliance with the provisions of the Act.
- There is a written contract between Newent Doctors Practice and CFH – Total Document management Ltd in addition to the standard terms of business. These are published on the DocMail website.
- That contract stipulates that DocMail can only act in accordance with instructions from Newent Doctors Practice i.e. they can only print and mail letters in accordance with data provided by us. They are not able to do anything else with that data.
- The contract also creates a legal requirement for DocMail to act in accordance with the seventh principle of the Data Protection Act.
- The partners of the practice have satisfied themselves that DocMail have provided sufficient guarantees in respect of the technical and organisational security measures governing the processing to be carried out.
- The partners have taken, and will continue to take, reasonable steps to ensure that DocMail are compliant with these security measures.
Please find below some more information about DocMail and how we work with them to ensure that we protect our patients’ personal data at all times.
DocMail is provided by CFH Total Document Management Ltd a secure print and mailing company who provide print and mailing services for local government, GPs, dentists, medical practices, schools, exam boards and banks etc. throughout the UK.
The system can be found online at www.docmail.co.uk and requires a secure user name and password for us to log on and upload our letters and address lists to create the printed output for dispatch to Royal Mail. The system allows us to upload a letter template and mailing data for the patients we want to write to via a secure web portal.