Frequently Asked Questions

We strive to provide the highest possible standards of care and pride ourselves on our high quality and customer service. However there may be times where you feel that our service has fallen below the standard you expect. We will do our best to resolve the issue, seek to understand why things went wrong and ensure that appropriate action is taken to reduce the risk of them being repeated.

Initially a phone call or email made to our office explaining the problem and giving some basic information to a member of our office team. The next step will be the sonographer that carried out the examination will be asked to review the report and images. We would then like you to put the complaint in writing for the attention of the Lindsay Grisbrook.

A thorough investigation will be carried out and a written response returned to you within 4 weeks. We do ask that the patient initiates the complaint. We can only correspond with the patient, and not family members. In exceptional circumstances we can discuss the complaint with a nominated person but only with the express written consent by the patient. This is to comply with data protection.

If you feel in any way that your examination was not satisfactory, or you are unhappy with any part of the process, we must receive your comments, within Seven days from your examination date. The Scanning Room is committed to excellent customer care and would welcome any comments from you that can be used to improve our services.

A non-diagnostic scan should be avoided, it suggests a number of things from the person scanning not having a formal training/education in ultrasound or being a health care professional. As a health care professional we have professional duty of care to both the woman and the baby to be able to identify and report any incidental findings or problems seen during the scan – a non-diagnostic scan will ignore these because they are not able to identify any problems. They may also not be professionally insured and not up to date with fundamental safety guidelines. The ultrasound equipment (diagnostic) is not being used as per manufacturer’s guidelines.

All of our scans are performed by fully qualified health care professionals with either a midwifery, nursing or radiography background. Our team act upon their duty of care when any problems or incidental findings are identified, they will fully discuss their findings, write a clinical report and refer you to the appropriate department for follow up.

Our ultrasound machines are set up and operated to the manufacturer’s guidelines with settings in keeping with safety guidelines for ultrasound scanning.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) who regulate both the public and private sector of healthcare want the public to be aware about the safety guidelines for 4D scanning/ souvenir scanning.

The British Medical Ultrasound Society (BMUS) in their statement about the safety of souvenir scanning and ‘keepsake’ scanning which can be read in full at www.bmus.org/obstetric-pregnancy/ . In short the person performing the scan must be fully qualified and scans should not be performed solely for souvenir images. Souvenir images or recordings for parents to keep are reasonable if they are produced during a diagnostic scan – provided it does not require ultrasound exposure to be greater in time or magnitude than that necessary to produce the required diagnostic information.

All of our sonographers are fully qualified with many years of experience both within the private sector and the NHS. We work closely within a clinical framework with the wellbeing of your baby being our priority. At each scan we will assess the growth of your baby and give you a report with our findings, we have excellent working relationships with local hospitals and robust referral processes if we need to refer you on. We operate within strict safety guidelines and use the As Low As Reasonably Achievable (ALARA) principle when scanning for thermal exposure times and mechanical index values.

There are no contraindications for first line ultrasound scans when operated within the required guidelines. The safety of diagnostic ultrasound continues to be reviewed by various professional bodies.

PRIVACY POLICY OUR COMMITMENT TO PRIVACY At The Scanning Room we respect the privacy and confidentiality of your personal information provided and are committed to safeguarding the privacy of our website and service users. We are committed to keeping the personal information shared with us confidential. The use of such information will only be for the purpose for which it was collected. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose and protect the personal information we obtain. WHAT INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT? We collect and store the information which is provided to complete the booking form submitted either through our website or completed from email, telephone or social media conversations. The information we collect is your name, Date of birth, email address and contact number and is classed as your ‘Personal Information’.

WHAT DO WE DO WITH YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION? The Scanning Room will only use your information for the purposes stated and for which you have given us your consent. Either before or when we collect personal information, we will explain how we intend to use it. We will limit the personal information we collect to what we need for those purposes, and we will use it only for those purposes. If in the rare event we wish to use your personal information for any other purpose we will seek your consent. • We only use your personal data to help us communicate with you effectively should you try to contact us via our site or we need to contact you. • We may use cookies, IP addresses or personal data to recognise you when you visit or return to our site, to track anonymised traffic and usage patterns, to prevent or detect fraud or abuses or to help us improve our site. • We retain personal data within our booking system (completed permanent appointments) in order to comply with legal obligations, enforce our terms and conditions, prevent fraud, collect any fees owed, resolve disputes, troubleshoot problems, assist with any investigations and take other actions as permitted by law. We may access, remove, alter or store or otherwise use any personal data if we think you have or may have breached our terms and conditions or to enforce our rights or protect the public or where if we are required to do so by law or appropriate authority. We will not pass your personal data to anyone outside of The Scanning Room for marketing purposes.

WHAT IS ‘PROCESSING’? ‘Processing’ includes the obtaining, recording or holding of information or data or carrying out any operation or set of operations on the information or data, including organising, altering, retrieving, consulting, using, disclosing, combining, or destroying the information or data. WHO DO WE GIVE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION TO? We only ever disclose your personal information if we need to refer you onto other healthcare practitioners. This will only ever be done with your prior consent. We do not rent or sell your personal information to anyone under any circumstances. We may process your personal information for our legitimate business interests e.g. direct marketing, data analytics. We do not transfer any information, personal or otherwise, outside of the EU. Under certain circumstances we may be required to disclose your personal information in response to valid requests by public authorities such as the Police or security services as required by law. HOW DO WE PROTECT YOUR INFORMATION? We use appropriate technical, organisational and administrative security measures to protect any information we hold from loss, misuse, unauthorised access, disclosure, alteration and destruction. Unfortunately, no company or service can guarantee complete security. HOW CAN YOU ACCESS THE PERSONAL INFORMATION WE HOLD ABOUT YOU? We will give you access to the personal information we retain about you and will provide you with the opportunity to update the personal information we retain to ensure it is accurate. You can request a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to have inaccuracies corrected. Please address requests with proof of identity to thescanningroom@gmail.com. If you would like us to remove the date we hold about you please email us at thescanningroom@gmail.com