Our privacy policy

This Privacy Notice sets out details of the information that Office Athletes (Cambridge) Limited and the clinicians/coaches/assessors responsible for your treatment/programmes/assessments may collect from you and how that information may be used. Please take your time to read this Privacy Notice carefully.

This Privacy Notice:

provides you with a detailed overview of how we will manage your data, from the point at which it is gathered and onwards.
will give you all the details you need on how we use your information, and how we will comply with the law in doing so. We may also, with your specific agreement, contact you with marketing materials.
sets out your rights in respect of your personal information, and how to exercise them. You can, for instance, seek access to your medical information, object to us using your information in particular ways and request rectification of any information which is inaccurate.
We are also open to improvement; if you have any feedback on this notice contact our Data Protection Officer with your thoughts.

About us

In this Privacy Notice we use “we” or “us” or “our” or “OA” to refer to the Office Athletes company who is using your personal information, and the clinicians/assessors/coaches who provide your treatment.

How to contact us

The Data Protection Officer (“DPO“) helps ensure that OA comply with data protection law.

The DPO can be contacted by:

Telephone: 01223 236122
Email: Mel@officeathletes.co.uk
Post: Data Protection Officer, Office Athletes, Ashtree House, Milton Road, Impington, CB249NF.
If you would like further information about any of the matters in this Privacy Notice or have any other questions about how we collect, store or use your personal information, please contact the DPO using the details above.

Your personal data and clinicians/assessors/coaches

As a client of OA, your treatment/assessment/programmes may be provided by a clinician (physiotherapist, sports therapist, masseur), gym coach or wellbeing assessor. For ease of reference, we refer to them simply as OA team throughout this Privacy Notice The OA team make decisions about what information is collected about you, and may maintain their own set of records in relation to the treatment that they provide. OA are the Data Controller and in some aspects the processor in respect of your personal information which they hold within those records, meaning that they must comply with the data protection legislation and relevant guidance when handling your personal information. To the extent relevant to their practice, you can expect the OA team to handle your information in line with this Privacy Notice. This includes using your personal information as set out in more detail below.

The OA team are expected to handle your personal data in accordance with the principles set out within this Privacy Notice. This means that whenever they use your personal data, they will only do so as set out in this Privacy Notice.

The OA team may process your personal information at different sites.

If you have any concerns about the way your OA team has handled your personal information please contact the DPO.

What personal information do we collect and use from clients?

The personal information that we collect will depend on your relationship with us. We will collect different information depending on what treatment/assessment programme you are undertaking.

We may use “special categories of personal information” (otherwise known as “special categories of data”) about you, such as information relating to your physical and mental health.

If you provide personal information to us about other individuals (including medical or financial information) you should inform the individual about the contents of this Privacy Notice. We will process such information in accordance with this Privacy Notice.

In addition, you should note that in the event you amend data which we already hold about you (for instance by amending a pre-populated form) then we will update our systems to reflect the amendments. Our systems will continue to store historical data.

Personal information

As a client of OA, the personal information we hold about you may include the following:

Name
Contact details, such as postal address, email address and telephone number (including mobile number)
Financial information, such as credit card details used to pay us for additional services
Occupation
Emergency contact details, including next of kin
Background referral details

Special Categories Personal Information

As a client of OA, we will hold information relating to your medical treatment which is known as a special category of personal data under the law, meaning that it must be handled even more sensitively. The special categories of personal information we hold about you may include the following:

Details of your current or former physical or mental health. This may include information about any healthcare you have received (both from OA directly and other healthcare providers such as GPs, dentists or hospitals (private and/or NHS)) or need, including about clinic and hospital visits and medicines administered. We provide further details below on the manner in which we handle such information.
Details of services you have received from us
Details of your nationality, race and/or ethnicity
Details of your religion
Details of any genetic data or biometric data relating to you
The confidentiality of your medical information is important to OA. We make every effort to prevent unauthorised access to and use of information relating to your current or former physical and mental health. In doing so, OA complies with UK data protection law, including the Data Protection Act 2018, and all applicable medical confidentiality guidelines issued by professional bodies including, but not limited to, the General Medical Council CSP and UKSCA.

From 25 May 2018, the current Data Protection Act will be replaced by the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and a new Data Protection Act. All uses of OA information will comply with the GDPR and the new Data Protection Act from that date onwards.

How do we collect your information?

Directly from you
Information may be collected directly from you when you complete:

Consent forms,
Disclaimer forms,
Health MOT assessments,
DSE assessments,
Training programme information.
You enter into one of our services offered,
You complete enquiry forms, survey questionnaires,
You submit a query to us including through our website, by email or by social media
you correspond with us by letter, email, telephone (all incoming and outgoing calls from/to OA are recorded) or social media, including where you reference OA in a public social media post
You take part in our marketing activities
From other healthcare organisations
Our clients sometimes receive healthcare from other organisations in addition to OA, and so in order to provide you with the best treatment possible we may have to collect personal information about you from other organisations with your consent. These may include:

Medical records from your GP
Medical records from your clinician (including their medical secretaries)
Medical records from your dentist
Medical records from the NHS or any private healthcare organisation
Medical records include information about your diagnosis, clinic and hospital visits and medicines administered.

From third parties
As detailed in the previous section, it is often necessary to seek information from other healthcare organisations. We may also collect information about you, with consent from third parties when:

You are referred to us for the provision of services including healthcare services
We liaise with your current or former employer, health professional or other treatment or benefit provider
We liaise with your family
We liaise with your insurance policy provider
We deal with experts (including medical experts) and other service providers about services you have received or are receiving from us
We deal with NHS health service bodies about services you have received or are receiving from us

How will we communicate with you?

In order to communicate with you, we are likely to do this by telephone, SMS, email, and/or post. If we contact you using the telephone number(s) which you have provided (landline and/or mobile), and you are not available which results in the call being directed to a voicemail and/or answering service, we may leave a voice message on your voicemail and/or answering service as appropriate.

However:

to ensure that we provide you with timely updates and reminders in relation to our services (including basic administration information and appointment information (including reminders)), we may communicate with you by SMS and/or unencrypted email.
to provide you with your medical information (including test results and other clinical updates) and/or invoicing information, we may communicate with you by email (which will be encrypted).The first time we send you any important encrypted email eg one that we are not also sending by post or which requires action to be taken, we will endeavour to contact you separately to ensure that you are able to access the encrypted email you are sent.
If we have your mobile number or your email address we may use this method of communication to contact you regarding patient surveys which are for the purpose of improving our service or monitoring outcomes and are not a form of marketing.
Please note that although providing your mobile number and email address and stating a preference to be communicated by a particular method will be taken as an affirmative confirmation that you are happy for us to contact you in that manner, we are not relying on your consent to process your personal data in order to correspond with you about your treatment. As set out further below, processing your personal data for those purposes is justified on the basis that it is necessary to provide you with wellbeing and healthcare services.

Surveys

As detailed above, we may contact you to ask you to participate in surveys regarding your treatment/assessments/programmes with OA. The surveys will largely be sent via email. This is not a form of marketing and the surveys do not try to sell you any further products or services; it is solely to gather information relating to your experience of OA, for the purposes of improving the quality and safety of the services we offer to future clients. It is necessary for us to process your personal data in order to contact you with these surveys, on the basis of our appropriate business needs and to improve the quality of the wellbeing/healthcare services we offer (further detail in the following sections). Participation in the surveys is entirely voluntary. You may also be given the opportunity to proactively opt into receiving a call back to further discuss your survey responses. These are all matters entirely for you.

In addition, we may also contact you to invite you to participate in on-line surveys which aim to monitor the outcomes of your service. Again these surveys are not a form of marketing.

What are the purposes in which your information is used?

We may ‘process’ your information for a number of different purposes, which is essentially the language used by the law to mean using your data. Each time we use your data we must have a legal justification to do so. The particular justification will depend on the purpose of the proposed use of your data. When the information that we process is classed as “special category of personal information”, we must have a specific additional legal justification in order to use it as proposed.

Generally we will rely on the following legal justifications, or ‘grounds’:

Taking steps at your request so that you can enter into a contract with OA and/or OA team to receive wellbeing/healthcare services from us.
For the purposes of providing you with wellbeing/ healthcare pursuant to a contract between you and OA and/OA team. We will rely on this for activities such as supporting your medical treatment or care and other benefits, supporting your doctor, nurse, carer or other healthcare professional and providing other services to you.
We have an appropriate business need to process your personal information and such business need does not cause harm to you. We will rely on this for activities such as quality assurance, maintaining our business records, developing and improving our products and services and monitoring outcomes.
We have a legal or regulatory obligation to use such personal information.
We need to use such personal information to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights.
You have provided your consent to our use of your personal information.
Note that failure to provide your information further to a contractual requirement with us or a OA team member may mean that we are unable to set you up as a client or facilitate the provision of your wellbeing/healthcare on OA’s systems.

We provide further detail on these grounds in the sections below.

The right to object to other uses of your personal data

You have a range of rights in respect of your personal data, as set out in detail in the section entitled “Your rights”. This includes the right to object to OA using your personal information in a particular way (such as sharing that information with third parties), and we must stop using it in that way unless specific exceptions apply. This includes, for example, if it is necessary to defend a legal claim brought against us, or it is otherwise necessary for the purposes of your ongoing treatment.

You will find details of our legal grounds for each of our processing purposes below. We have set out individually those purposes for which we will use your personal information, and under each one we set out the legal justifications, or grounds, which allow us to do so. You will note that we have set out a legal ground, as well as an ‘additional’ legal ground for special categories of personal information. This is because we have to demonstrate additional legal grounds where we are using

information which relates to a person’s wellbeing/healthcare, as we will be the majority of the times we use your personal information.

Purpose 1: To set you up as a client on OA’s systems including

Legal ground: Taking the necessary steps so that you can enter into a contract with us for the delivery of wellbeing/healthcare.

Additional legal ground for special categories of personal information: The use is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest.

Purpose 2: To provide you with wellbeing/healthcare and related services

Clearly, the reason you come to us is to provide you with wellbeing/healthcare, and so we have to use your personal information for that.

Legal grounds:

Providing you with wellbeing/healthcare and related services
Fulfilling our contract with you for the delivery of wellbeing/healthcare
Additional legal grounds for special categories of personal information:

We need you to consent in order to provide wellbeing/healthcare services to you
Purpose 3: For account settlement purposes

We will use your personal information in order to ensure that your account and billing is fully accurate and up-to-date

Legal grounds:

Our providing you wellbeing/healthcare and other related services
Fulfilling our contract with you for the delivery of wellbeing/healthcare
Our having an appropriate business need to use your information which does not overly prejudice you
Additional legal grounds for special categories of personal information:

We need to use the data in order to provide wellbeing/healthcare services to you
The use is necessary in order for us to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights
Purpose 4: For medical audit/research purposes

Clinical audit
OA may process your personal data for the purposes of local OA audit – ie an audit carried by your direct team for the purposes of assessing outcomes for clients and identifying improvements which could be made for the future. We are able to do so on the basis of a legitimate interest and the public interest in statistical and scientific research, and with appropriate safeguards in place. You are, however, entitled to object to us using your personal data for this purpose, and as a result of which we would need to stop doing so. If you would like to raise such an objection then please contact our Data Protection Officer using the details provided at the top of the page.

Legal grounds:

We have a legitimate interest in helping improve our services and have put appropriate safeguards in place to protect your privacy
Purpose 5: Communicating with you and resolving any queries or complaints that you might have.

From time to time, clients may raise queries, or even complaints, with OA and we take those communications very seriously. It is important that we resolve such matters fully and properly, and so we will need to use your personal information in order to do so.

Legal grounds:

Our providing you with wellbeing/healthcare and other related services
Our having an appropriate business need to use your information which does not overly prejudice you
Additional legal grounds for special categories of personal information:

The use is necessary for the provision of wellbeing/healthcare or treatment pursuant to a contract with a member of the OA team
The use is necessary in order for us to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights
Purpose 6: Communicating with any other individual that you ask us to update about your care and updating other healthcare professionals about your care.

In addition, other healthcare professionals or organisations may need to know about your treatment in order for them to provide you with safe and effective care, and so we may need to share your personal information with them. This would only be done with consent.

Legal grounds:

Our providing you with wellbeing/healthcare and other related services
We have a legitimate interest in ensuring that other wellbeing/healthcare professionals who are routinely involved in your care have a full picture of your treatment
Additional legal ground for special categories of personal information:

We need to use the data in order to provide wellbeing/healthcare services to you
The use is necessary in order for us to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights
Purpose 7: Complying with our legal or regulatory obligations, and defending or exercising our legal rights

As a provider of wellbeing and healthcare, we may be required by law or by regulators to provide personal information, and in which case we will have a legal responsibility to do so. In the event that OA and it`s team are the subject of litigation or complaints, in order to fully investigate and respond to those actions, it is necessary to access your personal information (although only to the extent that it is necessary and relevant to the subject-matter).

Legal grounds:

The use is necessary in order for us to comply with our legal obligations
Additional legal ground for special categories of personal information:

We need to use the data in order for others to provide informed wellbeing/healthcare services to you
The use is necessary for establishing, exercising or defending legal claims
Purpose 8: Managing our business operations such as maintaining accounting records, analysis of financial results, internal audit requirements, receiving professional advice (eg tax or legal advice)

In order to do this, we will not need to use your special categories of personal information and so we have not identified the additional ground to use your information for this purpose.

Legal grounds:

Our having an appropriate business need to use your information which does not overly prejudice you
Purpose 9: Provide marketing information to you from OA only

As a business, we need to carry out marketing but we are mindful of your rights and expectations in that regard. As a result, we will only provide you with marketing which is relevant to our business and only where you have specifically confirmed your consent to do so.

Legal grounds:

Our having an appropriate business need to use your information which does not overly prejudice you
You have provided your consent

Who do we share information with?

The OA team share information to secure the best treatment wellbeing services for you. We do not share your information with anyone else unless you provide written consent.

What marketing activities do we carry out?

We may also use your personal information to provide you with information about products or services which may be of interest to you where you have provided your consent for us to do so.

If you no longer wish to receive marketing emails sent by us, you can always contact us using the details set out at the top of the page to update your contact preferences.

An automated decision is a decision made by computer without any human input, and there will be no automated decision-making in relation to your services or other decisions which will produce legal or similarly significant effects. We may, however, decide to carry out automated-profiling in respect of your personal information, which is automated processing to evaluate certain characteristics in order for us to provide more tailored marketing. We may then focus our marketing to you depending on the outcome of that profiling. This could include targeted ads through social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.

If you would like further information about this, please contact our DPO.

How long do we keep personal information for?

We will only keep your personal information for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the relevant purposes set out in this Privacy Notice and in order to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations. Data will be retained for 18 months after your leave date with us. For physiotherapy it is regulation to retain records for 8 years.

If you would like further information regarding the periods for which your personal information will be stored, please contact our DPO for further details.

International data transfers

We do not transfer your data.

Your rights

Under data protection law you have certain rights in relation to the personal information that we hold about you. These include rights to know what information we hold about you and how it is used. You may exercise these rights at any time by contacting us using the details set out above at the top of the page.

There will not usually be a charge for handling a request to exercise your rights.

If we cannot comply with your request to exercise your rights we will usually tell you why.

There are some special rules about how these rights apply to health information as set out in legislation including the Data Protection Act (current and future), the General Data Protection Regulation as well as any secondary legislation which regulates the use of personal information.

If you make a large number of requests or it is clear that it is not reasonable for us to comply with a request then we do not have to respond. Alternatively, we can charge for responding.

Your rights include:

The right to access your personal information
You are usually entitled to a copy of the personal information we hold about you and details about how we use it.

Your information will usually be provided to you in writing, unless otherwise requested. If you have made the request electronically (eg by email) the information will be provided to you by electronic means where possible.

Please note that in some cases we may not be able to fully comply with your request, for example if your request involves the personal data of another person and it would not be fair to that person to provide it to you.

You are entitled to the following under data protection law.

Under Article 15(1) of the GDPR we must usually confirm whether we have personal information about you. If we do hold personal information about you we usually need to explain to you:

The purposes for which we use your personal information
The types of personal information we hold about you
Who your personal information has been or will be shared with, including in particular organisations based outside the EEA.
If your personal information leaves the EU, how we make sure that it is protected
Where possible, the length of time we expect to hold your personal information. If that is not possible, the criteria we use to determine how long we hold your information for
If the personal data we hold about you was not provided by you, details of the source of the information
Whether we make any decisions about you solely by computer and if so details of how those decision are made and the impact they may have on you
Your right to ask us to amend or delete your personal information
Your right to ask us to restrict how your personal information is used or to object to our use of your personal information
Your right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office
We also need to provide you with a copy of your personal data.

The right to rectification
We take reasonable steps to ensure that the information we hold about you is accurate and complete. However, if you do not believe this is the case, you can ask us to update or amend it.

The right to erasure (also known as the right to be forgotten)
We may update this Privacy Notice from time to time to ensure that it remains accurate. In the event that there are any material changes to the manner in which your personal information is to be used then we will provide you with an updated copy of this Privacy Notice.

In some circumstances, you have the right to request that we delete the personal information we hold about you. However, there are exceptions to this right and in certain circumstances we can refuse to delete the information in question. In particular, for example, we do not have to comply with your request if it is necessary to keep your information in order to perform tasks which are in the public interest, including public health, or for the purposes of establishing, exercise or defending legal claims.

The right to restriction of processing
In some circumstances, we must “pause” our use of your personal data if you ask us to. We do not have to comply with all requests to restrict our use of your personal information. In particular, for example, we do not have to comply with your request if it is necessary to keep your information in order to perform tasks which are in the public interest, including public health, or for the purposes of establishing, exercise or defending legal claims.

The right to data portability
In some circumstances, we must transfer personal information that you have provided to us to you or (if this is technically feasible another individual/ organisation of your choice. The information must be transferred in an electronic format.

The right to object to marketing
You can ask us to stop sending you marketing messages at any time and we must comply with your request. You can do this by contacting the DPO.

The right not to be subject to automatic decisions (ie decisions that are made about you by computer alone)
You have a right to not be subject to automatic decisions (ie decisions that are made about you by computer alone) that have a legal or other significant effect on you.

Please see the section entitled “What marketing activities do we carry out?” for detail about when we may make automatic decisions about you.

If you have been subject to an automated decision and do not agree with the outcome, you can challenge the decision. More about this is explained in the section entitled “What marketing activities do we carry out?”.

The right to withdraw consent
In some cases we need your consent in order for our use of your personal information to comply with data protection legislation.

We have explained in the section entitled “What are the purposes for which your information is used?” where we rely on your consent in this way. Where we do this, you have the right to withdraw your consent to further use of your personal information. You can do this by contacting OA’s DPO whose details at the top of the page.

The right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office
You can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office if you are unhappy with the way that we have dealt with a request from you to exercise any of these rights, or if you think we have not complied with our legal obligations.

More information can be found on the Information Commissioner’s Office website: https://ico.org.uk/

Making a complaint will not affect any other legal rights or remedies that you have.