We collect data on behalf of the Death Certificate Review Service (DCRS).
How we use data
We have a legal responsibility to review a random selection of medical certificates of cause of death (MCCDs). These are MCCDS which are not reported to the Procurator Fiscal.
Our review legal requirements mean we will speak with a variety of people. We will also access a range of electronic patient record systems.
Our service needs to retain data. This includes personal identifiable data. This provides an accurate record of the MCCD review.
A list of people we may contact in the course of a review is below. It includes what electronic systems we get supporting data from.
Data retained from telephone contacts, letter and emails communications with:
- Doctors and other NHS staff
- Local authority registrars
- Funeral directors
- Crematoria staff
- Crown Office Procurator Fiscal Service
- Members of the public
- Death Certification Review Service employees (past and present)
Data retained following access of records relating to the deceased person in electronic patient record systems:
- Emergency care summary (ECS)
- Key information summary (KIS)
- Palliative care summary (PCS)
- CHI national database
- Clinical portals
- Sci-Store
- Trak-care
- Other health board patient record systems
Lawful basis
The service carries out limited processing of personal data. This fulfils our public tasks under the Certification of Death (Scotland) Act 2011. We comply with data protection law when we process personal data.
Participants in our research and policy work
We may ask whether you wish to take part in a research project, consultation or survey.
Participation is voluntary and we get your consent to collect information.
Where possible we will avoid collecting personal information about you. When we need to, we delete your personal data as soon as we have collated the information. We save it in an anonymised format.
We will inform you that external researchers may hold research-related information. We will be working with these researchers during our review.
If you choose to provide us with information that identifies you, we will not publish it in reports.
Sharing your information
We may need to share your personal information with other organisations. We will only do so when necessary. Doing so will allow us to fulfil our statutory function. When we do, we will comply with data protection law.
How long we keep data
We will only keep your information for as long as we need to support the purposes we collected it for. We maintain records in line with Healthcare Improvement Scotland’s retention schedule. We will destroy or delete information in line with our confidential destruction procedures.