Privacy Statement

Bellview Clinics Partnerships, trading as Bellview Clinic, of Old Dublin Road, Mullingar, Co. Westmeath, N91 EK7R, is the data controller of your personal information.

Our Data Protection Officer is Dr Neil Healy. For any privacy question, email info@bellviewclinic.ie marked for the Data Protection Officer, or speak to reception. You may also complain to the Data Protection Commission (dataprotection.ie).

Websites: bellviewclinics.ie and bellviewclinics.com.

A medical practice is a trusted group governed by privacy and confidentiality. Our policies follow Medical Council guidelines and Irish and EU data-protection law.

• Your GP record — to provide your medical care. This is the record of your care, whichever clinical system we use.
• Care Portal — optional online registration, appointments, messages and, where offered, payments. You can use the practice without a Portal account.
• This website — practice information and a contact form for non-urgent admin enquiries. The form is not a clinical inbox.
• Computer tools, including AI — to help staff with notes, incoming letters and the Portal. They assist our team. They do not replace your clinician, and they do not become your clinical record. See section 5.

OneMedis Limited, an Irish company, provides the Care Portal, those staff tools and this website on our instructions. OneMedis is not your GP.

We hold information about you because it is needed to provide healthcare. For ordinary details we rely on our legal duties, the GMS public task, private-care contracts and the legitimate running of the practice. For health information we rely on the provision of health care, as given effect in Ireland by section 52 of the Data Protection Act 2018.

We do not rely on consent to hold your clinical record. Withdrawing Portal consent does not entitle you to deletion of records we are obliged to keep.

This may include your name, address, date of birth, contact details, PPS number, Individual Health Identifier where we hold it, medical card number, medical and family history, lifestyle, and next of kin. Please tell us if your details change. A signed registration form, on paper or through the Care Portal, is needed to gather this information.

Records are used only as far as staff need them to do their jobs — for example certificates, referrals, scanning letters, laboratory results, and medicolegal reports.

We disclose the minimum necessary. We share information without relying on your consent where the law requires or permits it, including notifiable infectious diseases, Social Welfare certificates of incapacity, and (with your consent unless another duty applies) reports for insurers or solicitors.

Minors. For a person under 18 we usually need a parent or guardian. A person who has reached 16 may consent to treatment and to processing of their medical data (Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997, section 23).

How long. Adult medical records are kept for eight years after last contact, or longer where a specific duty applies. If you move practice we will send your file to your new doctor with signed consent from that doctor, and we keep an archive copy for an appropriate period.

Teaching and audit. Staff may use clinical information for training and audit. Identifying details are removed for GP audits. We do not use your record for health research under this notice.

CCTV. Our premises are monitored for security. Footage is disclosed only where needed to investigate a break-in or other unauthorised access.

Care Portal. This is optional. Enrolment is your explicit consent. You can withdraw it in your Profile or by contacting us. That closes the Portal account within 30 days, except anything we must keep as part of your medical record. Staff approve new accounts before clinical information is released.

Depending on your clinic, you may register as a new patient, book appointments, request repeats, message the practice, record programme measurements, and pay by card. Card payments, when offered, are taken by a payment company in the EU on Bellview's merchant account. We do not store your card number and we do not send clinical information to the payment company.

Appointment reminders (email, text or in-Portal) are sent only on channels you have agreed to, and contain non-clinical detail — date, time, place and a Portal link, not the reason for the visit.

A person may hold their own Portal account from age 16. Under 16, access is through a parent or guardian after the practice has approved it.

Website contact form. Name, email, optional phone, date of birth (to tell people who share a name apart), clinic and message. Not for symptoms or clinical information. We use strictly necessary cookies only.

These tools assist our staff. They do not replace your doctor or nurse, and they do not decide your care. A person in the practice remains responsible for what is saved to your record.

• During an appointment we may use a note-taking assistant that listens only to produce a draft note for the clinician to check. The clinician will tell you. You may ask us not to use it for that visit.
• Incoming letters may be matched and filed with AI assistance. A member of staff always checks before anything is treated as filed.
• In the Care Portal an assistant may help you use the site or book. It will say that you are interacting with AI. It does not interpret results or give a clinical opinion.

Processing takes place in the European Economic Area. The provider is not allowed to use your information to train its models. Where the tool does not need your name we remove obvious personal details first; matching a letter to you still needs details such as name and date of birth. No decision about your diagnosis, treatment or how urgently you are seen is taken by a machine alone.

We do not use AI to diagnose you, to tell you what your results mean, or to send automated clinical advice.

We use specialist companies to host systems and send messages on our instructions. They are not allowed to use your information for their own marketing or to train AI models.

• A healthcare software provider in Ireland (OneMedis Limited) runs the Care Portal, staff tools and this website. Clinical and Portal processing is hosted in the EEA.
• An email provider in the EU sends appointment notices and account emails. Message content is non-clinical.
• A card-payment provider in the EU, when you pay online.
• Our website host may see a visitor's IP address on a global network, including outside the EEA, under EU standard contractual clauses. That is technical website data, not your GP record.

We do not sell your information.

Your GP record follows the eight-year rule in section 3.

Portal accounts last while you use the Portal, then are deleted or anonymised within 30 days except records we must keep. Website form copies are deleted once delivered to our mailbox (within seven days). Draft notes and related recordings are kept only as long as needed to produce and check the note.

Subject to the GDPR, the Data Protection Act 2018 and our duty to keep a clinical record, you may:

• access your information (often quickest with your doctor; formal requests within one month);
• correct inaccuracies;
• erase information where no retention duty applies;
• restrict or object to certain uses;
• receive certain information you provided in a portable form;
• withdraw consent where we rely on it (Care Portal). Withdrawal does not undo processing already carried out, and does not wipe your GP record.

Email info@bellviewclinic.ie for the Data Protection Officer.

We will update this notice when our services or the law change. The date at the top will change.

Bellview Clinics Partnerships, trading as Bellview Clinic
Old Dublin Road, Mullingar, Co. Westmeath, N91 EK7R
info@bellviewclinic.ie · bellviewclinics.ie