Comments wanted on Care Record Guarantee

Questions about the content of local health records and summary records and the options patients should have on information recorded about them are still open for debate, a BMA conference heard this week.

The conference “Challenges for Doctors in the Digital World” was held the day after the launch of the new Care Record Guarantee – the document that sets out the rights and responsibilities patients and the public will have in relation to their health information.

Delegates at were told by deputy chair of the Care Records Development Board (CRDB), Professor Sir Cyril Chantler, that the guarantee was not a finished document and feedback was needed. In particular the board, which is responsible for the guarantee’s development, wanted to hear how it worked in practice.

He listed remaining questions about the guarantee including:

• What goes on a summary record? What goes on a local record? How do they relate? Who sees which?
• What options should patients have to control what is recorded and how it is recorded and where it goes?

He said the CRDB was recommending that people should not be offered the choice to opt out of recording their healthcare data on the NHS Care Record Service – the national record service that will be available throughout England to authorised users with a legitimate reason for accessing a patient’s details. The board is supporting the right to control the sharing of data.

The BMA plans to have an open session on patient confidentiality at its annual meeting next month.

Speaking generally about NHS IT modernisation Sir Cyril said: “I really do think it has the potential to do more for patients than any single development since I qualified 42 years ago.”

Wider clinical engagement was recurring theme of the conference. Connecting for Health’s clinical lead for hospital doctors, Simon Eccles, urged medical staff to get involved with the development of systems before the solution hits the desktop.

“Do not wait until you can see the programme to identify how it can be used. It will be too late. Our aim will be to get clever ideas and amend the architecture.”