Increasingly, patient medical data is shared e.g. between GP surgeries and District Nursing, in order to give clinicians access to the most up to date information when attending patients.

The systems we operate require that any sharing of medical information is consented to by patients beforehand. Patients must consent to the sharing of data held by a health provider to other health providers and must also consent to which of the other providers can access their data.

e.g. it may be necessary to share data held in GP practices with district nurses but the local podiatry department would not need to see it to undertake their work. In this case, patients would allow the surgery to share their data, they would allow the district nurses to access it but they would not allow access by the podiatry department. In this way access to patient data is under patients' control and can be shared on a 'need to know' basis.

It is important that we have up to date contact details in case we need to contact you.

Please let us know as soon as possible if you change your address, telephone number or name. You will need to come into the surgery to complete a Change of Details form.

Please note: If your name has changed due to Marriage or by Deed Poll, you will need to provide us with a copy of the appropriate document (requirement of Department of Health).

If you have moved, please check to make sure your new address falls within our practice boundary. If not you will need to register with a new surgery.

The Central NHS Computer System, called the Summary Care Record (SCR), is intended to help emergency doctors and nurses help you when you contact them when the surgery is closed. Initially, it will contain just your medications and allergies.

Later on, as the SCR develops, other staff who work in the NHS will be able to access it, along with information from hospitals, out of hours services, and specialists letters that may be added as well.

Your information will be extracted from practices such as ours and held on central NHS databases.   

As with all new systems there are pros and cons to think about. When you speak to an emergency doctor, you might overlook something that is important and if they have access to your medical record it might avoid mistakes or problems. Even then, you should be asked to give your consent each time a member of NHS Staff wishes to access your record, unless you are medically unable to do so.

On the other hand, you may have strong views about sharing your personal information and wish to keep your information at the level of this practice. Connecting for Health (CfH), the government agency responsible for the Summary Care Record have agreed with doctors’ leaders that new patients registering with this practice should be able to decide whether or not their information is uploaded to the Central NHS Computer System.

For existing patients it is different in that it is assumed that you want your record uploaded to the Central NHS Computer System unless you actively opt out.