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Sharing Your Medical Record
Increasingly, patient medical data is shared among other healthcare professionals, such as district nursing team, out of hours, A&E etc in order to give clinicians access to the most up to date information when providing patient care
Patients must consent to sharing of the data held by a health provider out to other health providers and must also consent to which of the other providers can access their data e.g. it may be necessary to share data held in GP practices with district nurses but the local podiatry department would not need to see it to undertake their work.
In this case, patients would allow the surgery to share their data, they would allow the district nurses to access it but they would not allow access by the podiatry department. In this way access to patient data is under patients' control and can be shared on a 'need to know' basis.
Summary Care Record - National Data Opt Out
There is a Central NHS Computer System called the Summary Care Record (SCR). The Summary Care Record is meant to help emergency doctors and nurses help you when you contact them when the surgery is closed. Initially, it will contain just your medications and allergies.
As the central NHS computer system develops, (known as the ‘Summary Care Record’ – SCR), other staff who work in the NHS will be able to access it along with information from hospitals, out of hours services, and specialists letters that may be added as well.
Your information will be extracted from practices such as ours and held on central NHS databases.
As with all new systems there are pros and cons to think about. When you speak to an emergency doctor you might overlook something that is important and if they have access to your medical record it might avoid mistakes or problems, although even then, you should be asked to give your consent each time a member of NHS Staff wishes to access your record, unless you are medically unable to do so.
On the other hand, you may have strong views about sharing your personal information and wish to keep your information at the level of this practice.
All GP practices using EMIS Web (Optum) or SystmOne (TPP) are legally required to activate access, in line with the recent announcement of new legal directions governing use of the OpenSAFELY analytics platform
Click here for an easy read version that describes the service
For existing patients it is different in that it is assumed that you want your record uploaded to the Central NHS Computer System unless you actively opt out
What do patients need to know? Patients need to know that opting out of their confidential data being used for research and planning is a choice that they are free to make.
- Opting out will not affect their day to day care.
- They can revoke and change their decision at any point.
- If they choose to allow their confidential data to be used this will be done anonymously and will not be personally identifiable.
- If people do choose to allow their data to be used, they need take no further action.
- The national data opt-out question offers the following choice:
- Your confidential patient information can be used for improving health, care and services, including:
- Planning to improve health and care services.
- Research to find a cure for serious illnesses.
- I allow my data to be used for research and planning:
- Yes [the default answer].
- No.
- If you do not set a choice, it will be assumed that you are happy for your confidential patient information to be used for research and planning.
- Your confidential patient information can be used for improving health, care and services, including:
- Patients can choose to opt-out online at: https://www.nhs.uk/your-nhs-data-matters/. They will need:
- Their NHS number.
- An email address or phone number registered with an NHS service.
- They can also call the helpline on 0300 303 5678 or download a form from the NHS to opt-out.
- If patients want to opt-out on behalf of their children or have a formal proxy to make decisions on behalf of someone else (such as Lasting Power of Attorney) they can download a form from the NHS or phone the helpline.