Health Service Record Confidentiality

[Brian L Johnson]

On Fri, 07 Feb 2014 16:44:00 -0000, Ian Batten <igb at batten.eu.org> wrote:

> It seems to be coming from all angles, doesn't it?
>
> I've just been putting together the letter opting me and my children out  
> of care.data, working
> somewhat in the dark as I haven't received the much-bruited NHS  
> publicity.

You do need to explicitly state the codes which should be entered into  
your patient records.

http://medconfidential.org/how-to-opt-out/


> Doing the
> information exercise from surgeries has the problem that a lot of people  
> don't visit the doctor
> from one year's end to the next, and I don't know anyone who's actually  
> received the
> leaflet.
>
> But today I saw on the back of a bus an advert for this:
>
> http://www.midlandscentralcarerecord.nhs.uk
>
> which, again, I'm supposed to have been written to about and, again, I  
> haven't been.

Individual health practices seem to be instituting their own version of  
sharing.  I (but not my wife) got a leaflet from my health practice  
telling me that I could opt to have my data 'shared-in' and/or  
'shared-out'.

It was explained that other parts of the health service, (a smoking  
clinic, say) would only see my health data if I chose for my health  
practice to 'share-out'.  If my doctor wanted to see data from that  
smoking clinic they could only do so if I had chosen to 'share-in'.  Very  
confusing.

Then there's care.data...  see the link above.

> It's not clear if this will be covered by the 93C3 I already have on my  
> notes.  Hey ho,
> _another_ letter to my GP.  It's an absolutely shocking website,  
> containing no information
> about who the actual responsible body is other than a link to  
> "http://www.experiencecounts.org.uk"
> which could be a scam for all I know: it claims to be part of the NHS  
> (and has an NHS
> email address listed) but there's no evidence on its website that
> it's anything other than a bunch of blokes in a shed.  Their only  
> information governance
> is about dealing with social media.
>
> While then looking for the NHS Records "Guarantee", I found most copies  
> of it lurking
> on the National Records archive, because the Information Governance  
> Board of the
> NHS has been closed down, as has Connecting for Health, and therefore  
> most of the
> hits on the first page of Google's results point to dubious archive  
> sites rather than anything
> actively maintained.  What's the current status of the care records  
> "guarantee"?  What's
> the latest version?  Who knows?

I suspect we'll all know the extent of the sharing debacle once relentless  
adverts for hemorrhoid cream / electric cigarettes / support underwear /  
etc. appear in our Facebook sidebar.

-- 
Brian