Information about your health and care helps the NHS to improve your individual care, speed up diagnosis, plan your local services and research new treatments.

It can also help research organisations to explore new treatments or make discoveries.

You can decide that you do not want your information to be used in this way.

There are two main options;

Option 1: Opting out of the GP Data for Planning and Research (GPDDR) Formally known as GPES.

This means you don't want your data to be extracted from your GP clinical system and used for Planning and Research Purposes. You can opt out at any time. Find out more.

Option 2: Opting out of NHS Digital using or sharing your health data (held by any provider, not just your GP), for Planning and Research purposes.

You can opt out at any time. Find out more.

Other materials and materials in other languages are available here

How do I Opt Out?

To opt out of your data leaving the GP Practice for Research and Planning (Type 1), just contact your GP practice by phone, email or post and let us know.

To opt out of your health data being used or shared by NHS Digital (Type 2), you can;

Call

The phone number is 0300 303 5678 – Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm (excluding bank holidays).

Write

National Data Opt Out
Contact Centre
NHS Digital
HM Government
7 and 8 Wellington Place
Leeds
LS1 4AP

Email

enquiries@nhsdigital.nhs.uk

Online

https://www.nhs.uk/your-nhs-data-matters/manage-your-choice/

My Care Record enables health and care professionals to access information about you to improve your care.

Providing you with:

• Better co-ordinated and seamless care
• Quicker diagnosis and treatment
• Less paperwork and less repetition
• Fewer unnecessary clinical tests
• More accurate prescriptions
• More time to spend on clinical care
• Better health and care planning

Your GP, hospital, community health, mental health and social care teams may all hold records about your care separately. Often, only health and care professionals within the same organisation can see this information. This means it can be difficult for them to work together to deliver the best care.

My Care Record is an approach to improving care by joining up health and care information. Wherever possible, health and care professionals will be able to access your records from other services when it is needed for your care. This will make it easier and faster for them to make the best decisions. For example, a doctor treating you in hospital or a nurse working in the community could view the information they need from your GP record.

Several different secure computer systems are used across the region. These allow health and care professionals to digitally access your records held by other services. In some areas systems are already in place, in other areas more work is underway
to invest in the technology needed.

The approach also provides an agreement between all the health and care organisations involved. This means they commit to sharing information in a secure way to help improve your care. The My Care Record approach is in line with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which provides the legal basis to share information between health and care services when it is needed to deliver care. All your information will be held securely.

Certain information – that doesn’t identify you – will also be used to help improve services and plan for the future. For example, it will help us plan for the number of doctors, nurses and care workers needed to look after you in the future.

More information, including answers to frequently asked questions and a list of the organisations that are taking part can be found at mycarerecord.org.uk.

My Care Record and COVID-19

Our practice is part of the My Care Record approach which is supporting the work of health and care organisations across the East of England as they respond to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. For example, we are working to make sure doctors, nurses and co-ordination staff at places you may receive advice or treatment can see important information from your GP record. This could include NHS 111 or treatment centres such as the London NHS Nightingale Hospital. This will make it easier and faster for them to deliver effective care.

For more information, including the Privacy Notice, please visit the My Care Record website.

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.

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.