Important Information about your Health Records

Your Summary Care Record is an electronic record about your health. It will contain information about the medicines you take regularly, any allergies you have, and any problems you have had with medicines. This information will be uploaded from your medical records held at this surgery and held on a national NHS database, sometimes known as the ‘spine’. It will be available for healthcare professionals to access, usually with your permission, unless you are too ill to give it. Only those directly involved in your care will be permitted to access your record, and the Government says that strict security measures will be in place at all times to prevent unauthorised access.

If you do not take any action, you will have a Summary Care Record. This is because the Government Agency responsible for the Summary Care Record, called Connecting for Health, is assuming that everyone wants a Summary Care Record unless they opt out.

This practice believes that, as a patient, you should have the right to actively choose what should happen to your medical records and whether we should transfer information in these records to other organisations.

If you don’t opt out from the Summary Care Record now but change your mind at a later date, and decide that you want to opt out, it is important to be aware that if your SCR has ever been viewed by a medical professional, then whilst you can stop any further information from being added to it, you will not be able to have the previous data deleted. It can however be ‘hidden’ so that healthcare staff can’t see it and can only gain access to it by submitting a request in writing. If following investigation, access is deemed to be necessary, it will be granted.

If you wish to opt out of the Summary Care Record scheme please complete the Summary Care Record Opt Out form.