Christine’s Clinic
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The processing of personal data is governed by the General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 (the GDPR). This legislation will replace current data privacy law, giving more rights to you as an individual and more obligations to organisations holding your personal data.
One of the rights is the right to be informed, which means we have to give you additional information than we currently do about the way in which we use, share and store your personal information.
This means that we will be publishing a new privacy notice so that you can access this information, along with information about the increased rights you have regarding the information we hold on you and the legal basis on which we are using it.
This privacy notice applies to information we collect from:
patients;
prospective patients;
former patients;
visitors to our website;
Personal data relates to a living individual who can be identified from that data. Identification can be by the information alone or in conjunction with any other information in the data controller’s possession or likely to come into such possession. Examples of personal data we may hold about you include your contact and appointment details.
Special category data is a sub-category of personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, or trade union membership, and the processing of genetic data, biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying a natural person, data concerning health or data concerning a natural person’s sex life or sexual orientation. Examples of special category data that we may hold on you include your patient notes.
We comply with our obligations under the GDPR by keeping personal data up to date; by storing and destroying it securely; by not collecting or retaining excessive amounts of data; by protecting personal data from loss, misuse, unauthorised access and disclosure and by ensuring that appropriate technical measures are in place to protect personal data. We use your personal data for the purposes set out below.
This section applies to our patients, prospective patients, former patients and visitors to our clinic
We use your name, address, telephone number and email address to make and rearrange appointments. We are unable to send or receive encrypted emails so you should be aware that any emails we send or receive may not be protected in transit. We will also monitor any emails sent to us, including file attachments, for viruses or malicious software. Please be aware that it is your responsibility to ensure that any email you send us is complies with relevant legislation.
We will only use your name, address, telephone number and email address with your explicit consent including to send you marketing materials. we may occasionally send you general health information in the form of articles, advice or newsletters. You may withdraw this consent at any time.
Some patients and prospective patients return pre- first appointment questionnaires or advise us on their medical conditions and medication by email or online enquiry forms. We are unable to send or receive encrypted emails so you should be aware that any emails we send or receive may not be protected in transit. We will also monitor any emails sent to us, including file attachments, for viruses or malicious software. Please be aware that it is your responsibility to ensure that any email you send us complies with relevant legislation.
We keep a permanent attendance and treatment register which records all appointments for patients attending our clinic for tax purposes and to retain evidence in the event of criminal prosecutions, civil litigation, insurance claim or complaints to our regulator, the British Acupuncture Council (BAcC).
We may use your date of birth to help identify patients with the same name to avoid mistakes being made as to safe and appropriate treatment, for identification purposes if referring a patient to another health practitioner, and for identification purposes if writing to a registered medical practitioner to enable them to correctly identify the patient.
We use your presenting complaint and symptoms reported by you for the purposes of making a full traditional diagnosis, formulating treatment strategy and treatment planning.
We use any relevant medical and family history you have advised us for making a full traditional diagnosis, formulating treatment strategy and treatment planning.
We use your General Practitioner’s details in the event that we may need to make contact with your General Practitioner in an emergency or any treatment related reason This is also a mandatory requirement in the British Acupuncture Code of Professional Conduct.
We use our clinical findings about your health and wellbeing for making a full traditional diagnosis and formulating treatment strategy and treatment planning.
We retain a record of and refer to this record of any treatment given and details of progress of your case, including reviews of treatment planning to enable us to: review the full traditional diagnosis, treatment strategy and planning; and to secure evidence in the event of criminal proceedings, civil litigation, an insurance claim or complaint.
We record and use any information and advice that we have given, especially when referring patients to any other health professional, to help you to receive the most appropriate treatment and to secure evidence in the event of criminal proceedings, civil litigation, an insurance claim or other complaint.
We record any decisions made in conjunction with you to assist you in receiving the most appropriate treatment and to secure evidence in the event of criminal proceedings, civil litigation, an insurance claim or other complaint.
We retain accident records involving patients, visitors or staff who are involved in accidents at our clinic in accordance with UK Health and Safety legislation including the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR) to comply with the relevant law and to secure evidence in the event of criminal proceedings, civil litigation, an insurance claim or complaint.
In the event of an adverse incident occurring to any of our patients, we shall report the matter to the practitioners’ regulatory bodies such as the British Acupuncture Council and our insurers to enable the insurers to deal with any potential claims and to assist the British Acupuncture Council in developing safe practice guidelines, as well as providing research data and information for the BAcC’s insurers and other interested parties.
Where relevant we maintain records of the patient’s consent to treatment, or the consent of their next-of-kin in order to prove that the patient (and/or parent/guardian/next of kin) has given an informed consent to treatment and to secure evidence in the event of a civil claim, criminal prosecution, insurance claim or complaint.
When we receive a complaint, we will open a file containing the details of the complaint. This normally includes the identity of the complainant and any other individuals involved in the complaint.
We will only use the personal information we collect to process the complaint and to check the level of services we provide. We normally have to disclose the complainant’s identity to whoever the complaint is about. If a complainant does not want information identifying him or her to be disclosed then we will try to respect that but we cannot guarantee this. It may not always be possible to handle a complaint on an anonymous basis. We may need to provide personal information collected and processed in relation to complaints to the British Acupuncture Council or our insurers.
We will retain personal information contained in complaint files in line with our retention policy. This means that information relating to a complaint will be retained for two years from closure. It will be retained in a secure environment and access to it will be restricted according to the ‘need to know’ principle.
Similarly, where enquiries are submitted to us, we will only use the information supplied to us to deal with the enquiry and any subsequent issues and to check on the level of service we provide.
When someone visits our website, we use a third-party service, Google Analytics, to collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. We do this to find out information such as the number of visitors to the various parts of the site. This information is only processed in a way which does not identify anyone. We do not make, and do not allow Google to make any attempt to establish the identities of those visiting our website. If we do want to collect personally identifiable information through our website then we will be advise you accordingly. We will make it clear when we will collect personal information and will explain its intended use.
We use website cookies to improve user experience of our website by enabling our website to ‘remember’ users, either for the duration of their visit – using a ‘session cookie’ – or for repeat visits – using a ‘persistent cookie’.
Our website search is powered by Hostinger. Search queries and results are logged anonymously to help us improve our website and search functionality. No user-specific data is collected by us or any third party.
We use third party services, Hostinger to help maintain the security and performance of our website; to deliver this service it processes the IP addresses of visitors to our website.
We use a third-party service, Hostinger to host our websites. This site is hosted and run by Hostinger. We use a standard Hostinger service to collect anonymous information about users’ activity on the site, for example the number of users viewing pages on the site, to monitor and report on the effectiveness of the site and help us improve it.
Your personal data will be treated as strictly confidential, and will be shared:
with named third parties with your explicit consent;
with relevant authorities such as the police or court, if necessary, for compliance with a legal obligation to which we are subject e.g. a court order;
with your doctor or the police if necessary to protect yours or another person’s life;
with the police or a local authority for the purpose of safeguarding a children or vulnerable adults; or
with the practitioners’ regulatory bodies or their insurers in the event of a complaint or insurance claim being brought against Christine’s Clinic or our Solicitor in the event of any investigation or legal proceedings being brought against Christine’s Clinic.
For further details about the situations when information about you might be shared, please see the Information Commissioner’s website at https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/personal-information/sharing-my-info/
We shall retain your personal data for no longer than reasonably required. We shall retain patient records for a minimum period of seven years in accordance with the British Acupuncture Code of Professional Conduct https://www.acupuncture.org.uk/public-content/effective-practice/bacc-professional-codes.html
You may at any time request changes to be made to your contact details.
Your rights and your personal data
Unless subjected to an exemption under the GDPR, you have certain rights with respect to your personal data as set out below.
The right to request a copy of your personal data which we hold about you.
The right to request that we correct any personal data if it is found to be inaccurate or out of date.
The right to request that your personal data is erased where it is no longer necessary for us to retain such data.
The right to withdraw your consent to the processing at any time. This right does not apply where we are processing information under a lawful purpose other than consent.
The right to request that we provide you with your personal data and where possible, to transmit that data directly to another data controller, (known as the right to data portability), (where applicable) This right only applies where the processing is based on consent or is necessary for the performance of a contract with you and in either case then we are processing the data by automated means.
The right, where there is a dispute in relation to the accuracy or processing of your personal data, to request that a restriction is placed on further processing.
The right to object to the processing of personal data, (where applicable) This right only applies where processing is based on legitimate interests (or the performance of a task in the public interest/exercise of official authority); direct marketing and processing for the purposes of scientific/historical research and statistics.
The right to be informed if your data is lost or stolen. We shall also inform the Information Commissioner’s Office in accordance with the time limits in the GDPR.
The right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office.
For further details about these rights please see the Information Commissioner’s website at https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/is-my-information-being-handled-correctly/
If we wish to use your personal data for a new purpose, not covered by this Privacy Notice, then we will provide you with a new notice explaining this new use prior to commencing the processing and setting out of the relevant purposes and processing conditions. Where and whenever necessary, we will seek your prior consent to the new processing.
This website is owned and operated by Christine’s Clinic
If you have any questions regarding this Privacy Policy or the practices of this Site, please contact us by sending an email to fl**@*************ic.com
Last Updated: This Privacy Policy was last updated on 06.10.2025.