At the Shizuoka Cancer Center, we strive to make sure that patients receive the best possible medical treatments. As we consider it vital to protect patients’ personal information in course of achieving it, we handle it with utmost caution in line with the ordinances established by the Shizuoka Prefecture to this end. At the same time, we have decided upon the following related guidelines, for which we are committed to implement.
1. Scope of Personal Information
The scope of personal information collected from patients is restricted to that related to their nursing and treatments. When the information is used for any other purposes, patients will be informed beforehand for consent. This also applies when personal information is used online.
2. About Use of Personal Information
At the SCC, personal information will never be used for any other purposes from the intended ones, except the cases listed below.
Patients have given their consent for the use of their personal information.
Personal information is processed to the point that it is either impossible or difficult to identify. 1
Law enforcement requires it. We will never provide any third parties with it without consent from patients, unless required by laws and ordinances. 2
| 1 ‘Processing personal information’ means not only erasing a name of a particular patient but making it impossible to render his/her identification by any ways. | |
| 2 ‘Third parties’ are defined as individuals or groups other than patients themselves or the hospital, who do not meet the original purposes for the use of personal information or from whom we do not have patients’ consent regarding the use of personal information. |
3. Security Measures for Personal Information
At the SCC, the patients’ personal information is maintained as precise and up-dated as possible. Every possible effort is made to protect such information by preventing it from being leaked, lost, destroyed, tampered with or illegally accessed.
4. About Disclosure and Revision of Personal Information
At the SCC, when patients request to disclose their own personal information, we will respond appropriately in line with the ordinances regarding the protection of personal information established by the Shizuoka Prefecture.
5. Inquiry
Please contact the offices shown below for inquiry about the Policy for Protecting Personal Information.
Patient Support & Inquiries (2nd floor of the hospital)
The Management Center (3rd floor of the Administration Building)
6. Legal Compliance and Structure Improvement for Protecting Personal Information
The SCC complies with laws, ordinances, prefectural rules, guidelines set by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare and any relevant guidelines set in the fields of medicine. At the same time, we conduct timely reviews of the items listed above, and strive for making continuous improvements on the structure of protecting personal information.
At the SCC, the use of personal information of a patient (or his/her family and representatives) obtained during the course of medical treatment, medical care or consulting, which includes medical records, is restricted to the following purposes. The information is handled with all possible measures to protect its confidentiality. When it is used for any other purposes, all the necessary steps will be taken in accordance with directions given by the Ethical Review Board at the SCC. If and when you have any doubts or questions regarding this matter, please proceed to the Patient Support & Inquiries or the Management Center.
1. When personal information is used within the SCC, it will used:
For medical services including medical treatment, care and counseling.
As a part of efforts for improvement on medical care including clinical conferences.
For medical insurance administration (including commissioning medical processing).
For ward management at admission to and discharge from the hospital.
For accounting.
In reports on medical accidents as well as on improved plans for preventing medical accidents.
As a part of cooperation in in-hospital medical training.
For preparing base materials targeted at maintaining and improving standards of medical services and operation.
For paging a patient when it is necessary to do so in the process of medical treatment.
(In most cases, patients are paged by vibrations of the pagers, but they need to be called in in their names for certain examinations and treatments. )
For paging over the P.A. systems.
(Patients are paged over the P.A. systems in case of emergencies as well as when they lost the pagers.)
For name tags attached to hospital meals and infusion bottles.
(On the tags attached to hospital meals and infusion bottles, names of patients are clearly printed, so that they are never given to wrong patients.)
For other administrative purposes, including contracted business for running and maintaining medical information system, for security guards, for physical distribution management and for food-service operation.
(For running and maintaining medical information system, the data can be accessed from outside of the SCC for remote surveillance and maintenance.)
2. When personal information is provided outside of the SCC, the purposes will be restricted to:
Collaboration with other hospitals, clinics, educational institutions, pharmacies, home nursing stations or care providers, etc.
Responses to inquiries from other medical institutions.
The cases when opinions or assistance of external doctors are sought on behalf of patients.
Laboratory tests commissioned outside of the hospital.
Explanation of symptoms to patients’ families.
Provision of receipts to medical fee audit institutions.
Reponses to inquiries from medical fee audit institutions or insurance companies.
Provision of information to cancer screening bodies.
Consultation with or notification to professional medical bodies or insurance companies regarding medical professional liability insurance.
Administrative work related to patients’ health insurance.
Provision of information to external audit institutions including the Japan Council for Quality Health Care.
Provision of information for clinical statistics collection for national and prefectural projects on cancer registration.
Preparing documents required for qualification of doctors who want to be enrolled in societies of medical specialties.
Provision of information in replying to questionnaire conducted by national and prefectural governments.
(Patients stay anonymous as their privacy including names, years and dates of births, and addresses will be erased from documents when the information is provided.)
Provision of information and replies to questionnaires of public interests conducted by medical societies, journals, magazines and companies.
(Patients stay anonymous as their privacy including names, years and dates of births, and addresses will be erased from documents when the information is provided.)
Trainings and education of medical staff and students.
(Patients stay anonymous as their privacy including names, years and dates of births, and addresses will be erased from documents when the information is provided.)
Follow-back studies involving materials and data obtained from regular clinical services in the past, and making out reports or manuscripts for medical societies and journals.
(Patients stay anonymous as their privacy including names, years and dates of births, and addresses will be erased from documents when the information is provided. In case the anonymity is not or can not be assured due to the nature of study, the case will be brought to the patient privately for consent as directed by the Ethical Review Board of the SCC.)
If a patient finds any of the purposes stated above disapprobative, he/she should contact the relevant offices to tell them so.
When a patient does not state as disapprobative about the purposes stated above, it will be taken that his/her consent is given on them and his/her personal information will be handled accordingly.
Patients can withdraw or alter the terms of consent any time.
Giving consent or not will never affect on medical treatments.
When personal information is used for studies and experiments other than the cases stated in 2 – 17:
Any studies and experiments not falling under the Purpose of Personal Information 2 – 17 will be brought to the Ethical Review Board at the SCC for approval, in line with the relevant laws and guidelines. In such cases, the study or the experiment will be done within the scope of consent given in accordance with “The Implementation System for Clinical Trial Studies” (please see the relevant page for details). Or patients will be asked for consent individually in line with the directions by the Ethical Review Board.
