How Your Information Is Used

 

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The practice holds confidential patient information so we can provide better healthcare to patients. Information held by the practice also helps the NHS to research, plan and improve health and care services in England.

Within the practice our staff work as a team and this means members of the team, other than your doctor, may see your information in the course of their work. All of our staff are trained to handle your information properly and work according to the Data Protection Act.

 

Referrals

With your agreement, we may refer you other services and healthcare providers or may work with other services to provide your care in the practice. We share information with them to make sure your care is joined-up, for example telling the hospital consultant what medications you are taking. Other services will normally tell our surgery about the treatment they provide you.

 

Risk Profiling

Risk profiling allows us to search our patients’ records to identify people who would most benefit from particular care or treatement.

 

National Services

There are some national services like the National Cancer Screening Programme that collect and keep information from across the NHS. This is how the NHS knows when to contact you about services like cervical, breast or bowel cancer screening. Often you have the right not to allow these organisations to have your information, in which case please tell a member of our team, who can update your preferences.

 

Summary Care Record

Unless you have explicitly refused, all patients have an SCR which is made up of 3 types of information- medicines, allergies and any adverse reactions they have had to medicines. The purpose of the SCR is to provide essential information to professionals when the practice is closed or you attends A&E etc.

You can also choose to have additional information included in your SCR (called enhanced or additional SCR). This information includes:

  • Problems (except minor past problems)
  • Reasons for medication
  • Significant procedures, immunisations, anticipatory and end of life care information
  • Height, weight, blood pressure
  • Associated free text from included clinical codes

You can update your preferences by speaking to one of our team.

 

Local Care Record

The LCR joins-up your care records from your GP Practice with local hospital organisations (Guy’s and St Thomas’, King’s College Hospital and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trusts) through existing computer systems. Information is shared in real time and only shared when it is needed to make your care and treatment safer, easier and faster and only with those people directly involved in your care. This could include allowing a hospital doctor to see the medication that a GP has prescribed for you when you go in to hospital or allowing a GP to see what care, tests or treatment you received while in hospital. Above all it will allow professionals that are supporting you to work with you to make safer and better decisions about your care.

You can choose for your information not to be shared between your local NHS organisations by letting a member of our team know, but please note that not sharing your information may affect the care you receive.

 

Lambeth DataNet

Lambeth DataNet uses GP patient records to obtain anonymous information to help plan and improve healthcare services. The information collected includes data such as the area patients live, age, gender, ethnicity, language preference, country of birth and religion. DataNet also collects information such as whether patients have long term conditions such as diabetes, blood pressure and cholesterol levels and medication. This information is anonymous and does not include anything written as notes by the GP and cannot be linked to you.

The information is shared by GPs with GPs with NHS Lambeth Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), Lambeth Public Health and researchers at King’s College London, to identify patterns of illnesses and local health needs. This helps them to plan the best ways of improving services to make sure everyone can access good health care. The information collected by DataNet is private and secure and stored as anonymous data. DataNet is managed by NHS Lambeth Clinical Commissioning Group who work with partners from Lambeth and Southwark Public Health teams, King’s College London and Lambeth GPs. 

There are strict rules and procedures to decide who can access DataNet information which is never shared with third parties for commercial purposes.

 

NHS Data for Research and Service Planning

Your health and care information is used to improve your individual care. It is also used to help the NHS research new treatments and plan services. Wherever possible the NHS will try to use data that does not identify you, but sometimes it is necessary to use your confidential patient information.

In May 2018, the strict rules about how this data can and cannot be used were strengthened. The NHS is committed to keeping patient information safe and always being clear about how it is used. You can choose whether your confidential patient information is used for research and planning.

FIND OUT MORE VIA NHS DIGITAL