Terms of Use & Privacy Policy
Ivy Grove Surgery is committed to protecting your privacy and personal information.
Use of Personal Information
The only personal information that is made available to Ivy Grove Surgery via our website is sent entirely on a voluntary basis using either our contact form, sent directly to our email address or when joining our newsletter mailing list. Any information sent to Ivy Grove Surgery is treated with the strictest confidence and will not be publicised in any way without prior permission of the author.
We will never share, sell, or rent individual personal information with anyone without your advance permission or unless ordered by a court of law. Information submitted to us is only available to employees managing this information for purposes of contacting you or sending you emails or newsletters based on your request for information.
The contact form or email address that we have provided on this site is only for general questions or comments about the surgery and queries regarding the website. See below for more information on the medical advice provided on this website.
Logging of Personal Information and Cookies
Like very many websites, this website makes use of tracking facilities. We use the service provided by Statcounter and Google Analytics. This facility logs the date, time, IP address and domain server name of all connections made to the site and makes use of cookies to track unique visitors to the site. Our website itself does not send any cookies to its visitors.
The webmaster will use the information provided, which does not identify individual users, to analyse entry and exit pages, popular areas of the site, track visitors' progress through the site, and to help administer the site as a whole. For further details, please see Statcounter's privacy policy and Google's privacy policy pages (links open in a new window).
We log the originating IP address and the date and time of any submission of information using our contact or patient survey forms in order to prevent abuse of our website.
Our Patient Newsletter
Our newsletter is sent via email and is entirely permission based. If you receive a newsletter from us, our records indicate that (a) you have expressly shared your email address for the purpose of receiving information in the future, or (b) you have registered or otherwise have an existing relationship with us. To subscribe to the newsletter, please email us or visit the newsletters page.
Use of Email Addresses
We may use the email address that you provide to send you information about developments, new services or events at the surgery or other important news (such as open days, staff training information, surgery closure, adverse weather conditions or infectious disease outbreaks). We respect your time and attention by controlling the frequency of our mailings. Please let us know if you no longer wish to receive our newsletter or other communications by email.
If you believe you have received unwanted, unsolicited email from us or purporting to be sent from us, please forward a copy of that email with your comments to us for review.
Use of Mobile Phone Numbers
If you would like to be kept informed of developments or events at Ivy Grove Surgery or receive reminders for your appointments by text on your mobile phone, please let us have your mobile phone number. Please contact us on the email address shown above. If you would like to stop receiving information from us via text, please let us know.
Information and Advice on Medical Conditions
We do not currently provide a medical advice service by email or text. Neither form of communication is completely confidential and secure. We therefore strongly discourage you from using such methods for complaints, confidential information or queries related to personal medical conditions. We cannot guarantee that any such information received through these channels would be appropriately dealt with. The email addresses used for the administration of the website are not monitored on a regular basis and there may be a significant delay before you get a response. If you need to contact us about medical issues, please either telephone, or write to us. Our phone number and postal address is at the bottom of the page.
The information regarding various clinical conditions shown in various areas of our website and their related external links are provided for your convenience. The information shown is not intended to be a full and comprehensive guide to these conditions, nor is it intended to replace the advice of a dedicated health professional. If you are unsure about your medical condition, please contact your doctor, pharmacist or call NHS Direct (link opens in a new window) on 0845 4647 or discover contact details for other organisations.
How to Use Our Website
Our website is designed and built to modern web standards. Although the website has been tested as working with a variety of browsers on both PC and Mac platforms, including Internet Explorer, it is best viewed in a browser that complies with modern web standards such as Safari, Chrome or Opera (links open in a new window). To enjoy the site as we intended, javascript should be enabled in your browser. This will generally be enabled by default in all standard browsers.
However, if you have trouble viewing the content, particularly in Internet Explorer 6 or 7, you may need to modify some settings. In these browsers, you may get an information bar at the top the window saying 'To help protect your security, Internet Explorer has restricted this webpage from running scripts of ActiveX controls that could access your computer. Click here for options...'. Click the area, and select 'Allow Blocked Content'. You may also need to adjust the javascript preferences and/or security settings in your browser if you have changed them from default. This will enable the menu navigation to work, however, should you wish to keep it disabled, you may navigate the site via the 'Quick Links' shown in the sidebar on the left hand side.