Patient Record

June 7th 2021 Update

Many patients are contacting us with understandable concerns about the Government's plan to pool medical records on to a database. NHS Digital plans to put the medical histories of more than 55 million patients into a database available to academic and commercial third parties for research and planning purposes.

We share these concerns.

YOU CAN READ MORE ABOUT THIS HERE. 

A DIRECT LINK TO THE OPT OUT FORM IS AVAILABLE HERE.

The "National opt-out" does NOT appy to this project, you must fill the above form & give it to us at the practice. If this area concerns you then you mayalso wish to do the national opt-out. There is more information about the national opt-out here.

 

Sharing Your Medical Record

Increasingly, patient medical data is shared e.g. between GP surgeries and District Nursing, in order to give clinicians access to the most up to date information when attending patients.

The systems we operate require that any sharing of medical information is consented to by patients beforehand. 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.

Emergency care summary

There is a Central NHS Computer System called the Emergency Care Summary (ECS). The Emergency Care Summary is meant to help emergency doctors and nurses help you when you contact them when the surgery is closed. It will contain information on your medications and allergies.

Your information will be extracted from practices such as ours and held securely on central NHS databases.   

As with all 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. If you don’t want an Emergency Care Summary to be made for you, tell your GP surgery. Don’t forget that if you do have an Emergency Care Summary, you will be asked if staff can look at it every time they need to. You don’t have to agree to this.

Online Medical Records Access

All patients who are registered with our Online Service are able to view their medical records online.

We would ask firstly that you read the information in the two leaflets opposite. Then to register please print and complete the request form and bring it in to the surgery. Alternatively, if you come in to the front desk we can print you a form which is largely pre-filled. We will ask you a few questions to confirm your identity.

If you wish to apply for proxy access, ie on behalf of someone you care for, then there is a different form to complete (also opposite). Please be aware that for children, proxy access is only allowable up until their 11th birthday, after which different arrangements have to be made. This is in line with national guidance. The information leaflets below have more information.

Phone call recording policy

Our policy on information we gather because we record all our calls