Confidentiality

 

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Everyone working for the NHS has a legal duty to keep information about you confidential.

Your medical records, both written and computerised, are kept secure and access is restricted to practice members.

We only use or pass on any information about you to other health professionals involved directly with your care or with your express permission. Anyone who receives information from us is also under a legal duty to keep it confidential. Requests for copies of your medical records or other information about you will only be released to third parties, not involved with your medical care, with your explicit consent, except when not doing so would be deemed to put you or other members of the general public at risk.

Confidentiality

All records are protected by the Data Protection Act 1998.

 

Anonymous Database

This practice contributes anonymous patient data to a number of databases used for health care research purposes. The practice receives a nominal fee and training from the company aggregating the data to help improve quality in its computer records.

The company holding the anonymous data provides the data to authorised researchers for a data fee. The data collection scheme has been approved by the South East Multi-centre Research Ethics Committee. The committee also oversees all research conducted on the data.

The database will hold data on millions of patients and no patient will be traceable to anyone outside the practice.

 

Summary Care Record (SCR)

You will have an SCR, which will be available to people providing you with care anywhere in England. At first, your SCR will contain important information about your health, such as details of any allergies, your current prescriptions and whether you have had any bad reactions to medicines.

After that, each time you use any NHS health service, we may add details about any health problems, summaries of your care and the professionals treating you to your SCR. As we add new information to your record, you can discuss what is being added and how sensitive information is handled.

If you choose to have an SCR, NHS staff will ask you if they can look at it every time they need to. If you do not want us to make an SCR for you, you can choose not to have one.

Further information at the NHS Website – Your health and care records.

 

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