Northampton General Hospital information champions do well in national awards

Work by information governance experts at Northampton General Hospital has been rated as some of the best in the country in a national awards scheme.

Sally Berrill, has won the Information Sharing Champion of the Year Award in the National Health and Social Care Strategic Information Governance Network Awards. News (dsptoolkit.nhs.uk)

Sally is the Head of Data Security and Protection for the University Hospitals of Northamptonshire – which runs both Kettering and Northampton general hospitals.

She was also shortlisted in a second category of the awards - Information Governance Professional of the Year – for the way she has supported her team and promoted the importance of information sharing with partner organisations.

And Northampton General Hospital’s Subject Access Team was shortlisted for Information Governance Team of the Year for the way it rose to the challenges brought by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Information Governance describes the way hospitals share and protect the information of patients and staff and ensure it is only used appropriately.

Sally was nominated for her award as Information Sharing Champion of the Year by her colleague, Deputy Head of Data Security and Protection, Sarah Stell.

Sarah said: “Sally has worked tirelessly to embed the use of the Information Sharing Gateway both across the University Hospital of Northamptonshire Group and with our external system partners and further afield.

“She has delivered countless training and awareness sessions to external colleagues to advocate for the use of an electronic solution for the recording of information sharing.“This means that we can share data securely and efficiently to enable the continuation of patient care, whilst meeting the principles of the UK General Data Protection Regulations (UK GDPR).”

The Information Sharing Gateway allows hospitals oversight of data that is shared with external parties, ensuring that the information is shared legally in line with the UK GDPR and only with organisations that can demonstrate that they will have appropriate safeguards in place to protect data.

Northampton General Hospital’s Access Team was among a handful of teams shortlisted for the national Information Governance Team of the Year Award.

This is the team that help members of the public to access their medical records, which is their right under the Data Protection Act 2018.

The team process almost 300 requests each month from patients, health care professional, solicitors and police, meeting the statutory deadline of one calendar month.

They were nominated for the award for the way they have worked during the Covid-19 pandemic and maintained their services – even though they had to move offices twice.

They were nominated by Deputy Head of Data Security and Protection, Sarah Stell, who said: “I am nominating the NGH Access team for this award in recognition for the challenges that they have faced as a team since the start of the pandemic, and the way in which they have overcome these.”

The Northampton Team are now working with the KGH equivalent Team to align processes and improve response times which is a great example of the two hospitals working together to improve services.

Chris Waller, previous Head of Information Governance at Kettering General Hospital, was also shortlisted for Information Governance Professional of the Year posthumously after he sadly died of cancer in May.