New for October 2023 - 'Prospective Medical Record On-line Access'

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.

All applications for medical record access must be authorised by a GP or other designated member of the practice team before this is enabled for a registered online user. A GP may wish to review the record and discuss the content with the patient prior to authorising access. Access to retrospective access (past) will not be enabled for any individual registered with the practice for less than three months except by approval of a GP partner. All patients wishing to see their retrospective medical records should come into reception and complete the relevant form. We would require photo ID as part of this application. By signing this form you will be giving us permission to proceed with setting up this service for you. If you decide not to join, or wish to withdraw, it will not affect your treatment in any way. Access will be withdrawn to patients that do not use the system in a responsible manner and it is the patient's responsibility to keep their username and passwords secure. Please remember that this process will take 21 days from submitting the relevant form.

There is a new 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.

Later on 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. Connecting for Health (CfH), the government agency responsible for the Summary Care Record have agreed with doctors’ leaders that new patients registering with this practice should be able to decide whether or not their information is uploaded to the Central NHS Computer System.

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.