Your health records and all the information that we hold about you is treated as confidential. Our duty of confidentiality applies to all our patients, regardless of their age. Information may need to be shared with other healthcare providers or other third party organisations in order to give you the care you need, or to plan or pay for services. If you have any concerns about this please speak to your doctor.

Your information will only be passed on to third parties such as solicitors with your written consent.

Requesting access to your patient record

You can request access to all or part of your medical record. If you have specific questions about small parts of your record this can usually be dealt with by your doctor, during a consultation. However, if you require access to larger parts of your record you will be asked to complete a form and show proof of your identity.

If third party organisations such as insurance companies want access to your records or medical reports provided by your GP, they will ask you to sign an agreement so that they have the authority to request access. If you wish to view any information before it is passed to a third party you should let us know at the time. The insurance companies will usually include this in their paperwork so that you can indicate if you wish to view the information before it is sent.

Research and Planning

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) run a new medicine safety system. This system monitors medicines which are in use and being prescribed for patients. This applies particularly to new medicines. It is designed to assess the safety and health benefits of medicines either new to the market or those with changes to their use. It is an important public health initiative.

To do this effectively large amounts of data are required. This practice has agreed to be part of this scheme.

The data provided by the practice are anonymised and cannot be identified with an individual patient. The practice is also anonymised. Data will be reported at a geographic region relating to populations of about 5 million.

This practice along with all other practices and other care settings such as hospitals etc will soon be providing information to the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) in a scheme called care data. The information will be used for medical research and to provide information that will help providers commission better services for patients. The HSCIC will act as a repository for the data allowing access to third parties, such as health researchers, who have satisfied the very stringent conditions attached to the use of this data.

The use of the data will be very tightly controlled and in most cases the data will be anonymous. However, in some very limited circumstances identifiable data may be collected. Whilst GP surgeries are obliged to allow data to be transferred from their systems, individual patients can remove consent for any personal confidential data to be transferred from their GP practice. Consent can also be separately removed to prevent the HSCIC from releasing personal and confidential data, that might include data collected from sources other than the GP practice, to third parties.

Opt-out

If you want to remove consent for the transfer of your personal confidential data to be transferred from our computer system to the HSCIC, or prevent release of your personal confidential data by the HSCIC, you can use our ask reception a question form.

We produce a short leaflet which provides patients with information about how their information may be used and how it is protected from unauthorised access. You can download a copy here. This is formatted as a double-sided document.