Call Recording Policy

This Policy provides information about the following

• What is the purpose of call recording?
• What calls are recorded?
• What happens to the recordings?
• Who can access call recordings?

At St Bartholomew & Hollow Way Medical Practice, our telephone system provider is X-on (otherwise known as Surgery Connect)

What Is The Purpose Of Call Recording?

In accordance with the UK GDPR, the lawful basis for processing data also applies to the recording of telephone calls. To confirm with these regulations, the practice must:

• Advise callers (incoming and outgoing) that the call is being recorded.
• Provide information about these recordings. This information must be made available to the public and explain: What is being recorded, why it is being recorded, how it is stored, and who can access the recordings.

More information

• Data Protection Act 2018 Overview
• Lawfulness of processing

Call recording provides the ability to record a voice conversation over an audio source. This allows us to capture our telephone conversations into a digital file format, which can then be retrieved and listened back to in the future.

At St Bartholomew & Hollow Way Medical Practice, the main purpose of procuring a call recording system is for training and monitoring purposes. Specifically the monitoring of activity made to and from our patient care coordination team.

We may use call recordings for

• Training our new practice staff.
• Identifying practice staff training needs.
• Establishing facts relating to these calls. For example, to be used during our complaints procedure, or if required in the prevention or detection of crime.
• Protecting staff from nuisance or abusive calls.

What Calls Are Recorded?

At St Bartholomew & Hollow Way Medical Practice, we record incoming and outgoing calls of certain teams within the organisation. Depending on the business needs, this may change in the future.

The types of calls that may be recorded

• Calls made to the surgery using our main number 
• Calls made to the surgery using our professional bypass number.
• Calls made using our main telephone number 

Types of calls that will not be recorded

• Calls made to our Surgery using our main line whereby the caller or recipient has explicitly declined their call being recorded

What Happens To The Recordings?

All call recordings are stored on a central cloud system hosted by our telephone provider for no more than three years. These recordings are not automatically transferred to the clinical record of care. However, they can be transferred manually if it is deemed necessary for the direct care of that patient.

If it is deemed appropriate by the practice management team, call recordings can be withdrawn from the cloud and deleted or downloaded into an MP3 file format and stored on their secure drives.

In the event that a call recording is retrieved and downloaded, a copy of the original file will be made and saved in the practice secure folder. The original file will stay on the cloud unless manually deleted by the user.

In the event that a call recording is deleted from the cloud, there will be no way of re retrieving the file at a later date.

Who Can Access These Call Recordings?

Call recording access is limited to a very small number of senior members of staff, these include:

• The Practice Management team.
• The Practice I.T Support team.
• X-on (only if they have gained explicit consent for each recording by a member of practice staff).

Patients at our Surgery have the right to request a copy of their call recordings under what’s known as a Subject Access Request. You have the right to submit a Subject Access Request in writing, by email, or verbally.