Data Sharing

Confidentiality

You have a right to confidentiality. Occasionally it may be necessary to allow other health care professionals to have information from your records, this is usually if they are providing a service to you. If you have any concerns regarding this, please contact the Practice Manager.

Summary Care Record

In common with all GP surgeries, Olive Medical Practice is required to extract and upload information from GP records to the national Summary Care Record (SCR) database, one of a number of NHS databases.

Your SCR contains the following basic information:

  • the medication you are taking
  • your allergies
  • any bad reactions you may have had to certain medications

It also contains your name, address, date of birth and NHS number, which helps to identify you correctly.

A SCR is used in a number of healthcare settings and will provide healthcare professionals with any information they wouldn’t otherwise have.

For example, when you are visiting an urgent care centre or being admitted to a hospital, staff could view your SCR and check which medications you’re on and any allergies you may have.

The information will potentially be available to healthcare professionals across England, for the purpose of your direct clinical care (a “primary” use of your information).

The SCR is therefore a nationally available database.

The information is extracted and uploaded to NHS Digital, who is therefore the data controller for the Summary Care Record database.

Who can access the Summary Care Record?

Only authorised healthcare professionals directly involved in your care can access your SCR. Your SCR won’t be used for any other purposes.

The person viewing your SCR:

  • needs to have an NHS Smartcard with a chip and passcode
  • will only see the information they need to do their job
  • will have their details recorded every time they look at your record

In addition, the healthcare professional must seek your permission if they need to look at your SCR. If they can’t ask you because you are unconscious or otherwise unable to communicate, they may decide to look at your record because doing so is in your best interest.

This access is recorded and checked by the privacy officer of the organisation to ensure it is appropriate.

If you do not wish to have, or continue to have, a Summary Care Record they you can opt-out at any time. If you do opt-out, your uploaded data will be “blanked”, no one will be able to access it, and no further information about you will be uploaded from your GP record. If you do opt-out or if you have already opted out, you can opt back in at any time and have a Summary Care Record created.

Further information about Summary Care Records is available from:

If you wish to opt-out, please ask at Reception for a form to complete.

Secondary uses of your medical records

You have the right to control how medical information about you is processed, used, shared, disseminated or sold for purposes other thanĀ  your direct medical care – this is called secondary uses (or purposes)

Secondary uses include projects involved in risk stratification, “population health management”, national clinical audits, research, healthcare planning, commissioning of healthcare services by CCGs, commercial or even political uses.

You can control your personal confidential information by expressing an objection, or opting out to the surgery.

We will then add a special READcode to your GP record.

When this code is present in your GP record, it should prevent identifiable information about you being extracted from your GP record and being uploaded to any other organisation for purposes other than your direct care.

You will still be invited to cervical screening, breast screening, bowel cancer screening, diabetic retinopathy screening, abdominal aortic aneurysm screening, and any other current or future national screening programmes, if you are eligible – the opt-out does not prevent these programmes in any way.

Nor will an opt-out prevent you from taking part in medical research with your explicit consent. If you wish to opt out of secondary uses of information from your GP record, then please ask for a “Opt-out Form” from Reception.

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