Greystoke Surgery
How we use your personal medical record
We currently keep most of your patient record on our practice computer system, though there is still a small element that is kept in paper format within the surgery premises.
We have several policies and procedures in place to ensure that we keep your data safe and up-to-date and we our registered with the Information Commissioners Office to ensure that we commit to comply with the 1998 Data Protection Act and the Computer Misuse Act of 1990.
Our primary healthcare team have full access to our computer system and to your medical records when they treat you to enable them to carry out their roles fully and give you the best possible healthcare.
Currently our Primary Healthcare team consists of :
Doctors, Practice Nurses, Receptionists, District Nurses, Midwives, Health Visitors, Diabetes Dieticians, CPN Nurses, Counsellors and Podiatrists.
The healthcare professionals not employed by the practice have their own computer systems but from September 2013 they will, with your permission, be able to access your record from their own system for the period of time that they are treating you. We have enabled our system to allow this to happen however before they access your record they will be required to ask your permission to do so. Please be aware of this when you attend a clinic not based in our practice. You are fully entitled to refuse the health professional access to your GP record however this may mean that they will be unable to authorise some treatments
From October 2013 we have been instructed to allow the extract of coded data to the government organisation called the Health & Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC), this data will contain the NHS number and Postcode of patients and certain coded information but no free text. There is a possible national legal challenge to this instruction however this is the current policy This information is joined with hospital fed data to enable researchers to build data patterns on disease prevalence and other research areas. As GP practices we cannot opt out of this process however if you do not wish your information to be passed onto this body please let the practice know. Further information is available at www.nhs.uk/caredata or there are folders and posters available in surgery.
We continue to upload Summary Care Record Data to the NHS National Data Spine and this data is limited to Key Medication and Allergies. This data can be accessed by Healthcare professionals throughout the country for example when you present for treatment in Accident and Emergency. This system has been working for a couple of years now and operates on presumed consent i.e. we upload this data unless you have told us not to, following the national campaign two years ago . If you wish this to stop please inform the surgery.
If you have any queries on the above please do not hesitate to contact Jenni Dollman, our practice manager at the surgery.