You will be receiving through the post a letter from Warwickshire PCT aka 'NHS Warwickshire' about the Summary Care Record (SCR). This consists of an upload of medications, allergies and adverse reactions from GP records onto a central ‘spine’ or database, which will be under the control of NHS Connecting for Health or its agents. In the future, more data may be uploaded. There may be benefits in that unscheduled care providers, for example primary care out-of-hours services, emergency departments, walk-in-centres and GP practices seeing patients requiring immediate necessary treatment or newly registered patients should have access to important information about you, provided they have a working computer connected to the NHS net, a smartcard and can remember their password. The plan is for your records only to be accessed when you have given your consent, so those not directly concerned with your care should not be able to see your record, but there is no mechanism physically to prevent access.

All records are covered by the Data Protection Act. Under the Act, your GP is the Data Controller for your GP records, whereas once data is uploaded, the Data Controller is the current Secretary of State for Health, which may or may not be reassuring.

The government's record on keeping data safe is not unblemished...

Once the SCR is created it cannot be removed, only hidden.

If you are happy for an SCR to be created for you, you need do nothing. If you do not wish for one, you need to inform us, either using the opt-out form, or simply by telling us to add code 93C3 to your record.

It is quite difficult to discern what plans are currently afoot for Primary Care. If you enquire about plans for polyclinics, you will be told there are no plans to establish polyclinics. This is because they have been renamed 'GP-lead Health Centres' but, as far as we are aware, the plans remain unchanged. However, it is clear that the established clinics are underused and very expensive.

With a General Election to be called shortly, other party's policies should be examined. At present, Tory & LibDem policies are by no means specific, pledging only to maintain services and reduce bureacracy. However, in various speeches, health spokesmen have given disconcerting support to commercialisation of the NHS, despite the dismal record of the commercial sector in delivering Out-of-Hours services, PFI hospitals etc. Check out the 'Look after our NHS' website.

I would like to thank all our patients who wrote & emailed in support of proper General Practice.

Home | Details | Times | Factsheets | Out of Hours | Latest |Other Matters