GPs are to call for their confidentiality concerns over the NHS Care Records Service to be resolved before any further progress is agreed on implementing the National Programme for IT, at next week’s local medical committees’ conference.
Motions to the conference include several highlighting concerns over the confidentiality of patient information on the spine, further demands that the NCRS should be based on an opt-in consent model and calls for the public to be fully informed about the exact nature of the information that is held on the spine.
A motion from Devon LMC describes the NHS data spine as “a major threat to our civil liberties” and proposes that the conference “advises GPs and their families to consider withdrawing themselves from the spine as an example to the nation.”
Dr Adrian Midgley, a GP in Exeter and member of Devon LMC, who helped to write the motion, said he had no confidence in the confidentiality of any patient data held on the spine.
He told EHI Primary Care: “One thing worth highlighting is that the design of the system means that if a part of someone’s record is copied to the spine, and they then say they don’t want that information on the spine, they will be told it’s been deleted. But in fact it will just be marked as deleted — which is equivalent to putting a Post-it note in the top right hand corner of a paper file saying "deleted". That’s partly to do with the way databases work, but that’s not the way it’s advertised to patients.”
Buckinghamshire LMC is calling for the British Medical Association to mount a national publicity campaign so that patients are aware of what will happen to their personal information under Connecting for Health.
A motion from Nottinghamshire LMC, which originally raised concerns about access to the personal demographic service (PDS) on the spine, claims that the government’s NHS IT strategy contravenes one of the Data Protection Act principles, in that it fails to ensure that health professionals can only access directly relevant parts of the patients’ health record, and believes that the public would be justifiably concerned were they informed of this fact.
Other IT motions at the LMCs’ conference criticise the GP Systems of Choice proposals as inflexible and also describe Choose and Book as “deeply flawed and not fit for purpose.”
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