In accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998 and the Access to Health Records Act, patients may request to see their medical records. Such requests should be made through the practice manager and may be subject to an administration fee. No information will be released without the patient’s consent unless we are legally obliged to do so.
Increasingly, patient medical data is shared—for example, between GP surgeries and district nursing teams—to ensure clinicians have access to the most up-to-date information when treating patients.
The systems we use require that any sharing of medical information is consented to by the patient in advance. Patients must give consent for data held by one healthcare provider to be shared with other providers, and they must also specify which providers are permitted to access their data.
For example, it may be necessary to share data held by GP practices with district nurses, but the local podiatry department may not require access to carry out their work. In this case, the patient would consent to the GP surgery sharing their data, allow district nurses to access it, but withhold consent for access by the podiatry department. This ensures that access to patient data remains under the patient’s control and is shared strictly on a ‘need-to-know’ basis.