How sharing patient data with NHS Digital helps the NHS and you
The NHS needs data about the patients it treats in order to plan and deliver its services and to ensure that care and treatment provided is safe and effective. The General Practice Data for Planning and Research data collection will help the NHS to improve health and care services for everyone by collecting patient data that can be used to do this. For example patient data can help the NHS to:
- monitor the long-term safety and effectiveness of care
- plan how to deliver better health and care services
- prevent the spread of infectious diseases
- identify new treatments and medicines through health research
GP practices already share patient data for these purposes, but this new data collection will be more efficient and effective.
This means that GPs can get on with looking after their patients, and NHS Digital can provide controlled access to patient data to the NHS and other organisations who need to use it, to improve health and care for everyone.
Contributing to research projects will benefit us all as better and safer treatments are introduced more quickly and effectively without compromising your privacy and confidentiality.
This collection will start from 1 July 2021. Patient data will be collected from GP medical records about:
- any living patient registered at a GP practice in England when the collection started – this includes children and adults
- any patient who died after the data collection started, and was previously registered at a GP practice in England when the data collection started
We will not collect your name or where you live. Any other data that could directly identify you, for example NHS number, General Practice Local Patient Number, full postcode and date of birth, is replaced with unique codes which are produced by de-identification software before the data is shared with NHS Digital.
For more information please follow this link: https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/data-collections-and-data-sets/data-collections/general-practice-data-for-planning-and-research/transparency-notice
You can opt-out of sharing this information by completing the following form Type-one-Opt-out-Form
Information Sharing
You may be receiving care from other people as well as your GP (eg NHS Hospital Trust, Social Services, private hospitals etc). So that we can all work together for your benefit we may need to share some information about you.
We only ever pass on information about you if it is in your interest with regard to your health. Whenever we can we shall remove details which identify you. The law strictly controls the sharing of some types of very sensitive personal information. Sometimes we may have to share information with the Department of Health when giving certain vaccinations. If you do not want us to share this information please inform us and your notes will be marked accordingly. Your personal details will not be used for research purposes unless you have been informed beforehand and given your consent for us to do so.
In order to assure the quality of the care and training we provide our clinical records are sometimes inspected by outside visitors. The visitors must make undertakings to keep your records confidential before we will allow them to see them. You can refuse to participate in these inspections by informing the reception staff appropriately.
We can arrange that your name does not appear on the LED in the waiting room when the doctor calls you into surgery if you wish. You can be called by using your NHS number. Please inform a member of staff that this is your preference and ask them to let you know your NHS number. Equally if you have difficulty in seeing the display please inform a member of staff and you will be called when your appointment is due.
