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.

Information about the General Practioners and the practice required for disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act can be made available to the public.

All requests for such information should be made to the Practice Director.

The practice complies with data protection and access to medical records legislation.  Identifiable information about you will be shared with others in the following circumstances:

• To provide further medical treatment for you (e.g. from district nurses and hospital services).
• To help you access other services (e.g. from the social work department). This requires your consent.
• When we have a duty to others (e.g. in child protection cases). Anonymised patient information will also be used at local and national level to help the health board and government plan services (e.g. for diabetic care).

If you do not wish anonymous information about you to be used in such a way, please let us know.

Reception and administration staff require access to your medical records in order to do their jobs. These members of staff are bound by the same rules of confidentiality as the medical staff.

We promise to treat everyone as an individual, with no discrimination.

Our patients will be treated as people not just a medical condition. This means we plan care, which emphasises the patient’s individual needs, dignity and strict confidentiality.

The care given will be research based and delivered with the highest standards.

Advice, support and information will be available in order to help our patients make the right choices.

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.