Sharing your medical information

Health professionals are trained to keep your records secure and to manage them responsibly and in confidence.

There are several models for sharing data which have all been put into place nationally and locally in different years.

Please click here for a Data Sharing Table which shows what information is shared and links below for more information.

Sharing your medical information

Sharing your record benefits you because:

  • You won’t need to repeat your medical history
  • You avoid unnecessary appointments and tests
  • Your health professional has the right information at the right time.

Patients have rights to dissent from sharing their data with other organisations. Everyone is automatically implied as yes to sharing their data. If you wish to dissent please let us know as soon as possible. The dissent will only apply from the date you inform us.

 Please click here: Consent form Sharing your medical information Print, sign and return to reception.

 

Sharing Vaccination Data during the COVID Pandemic

During the COVID pandemic we have signed an agreement with our Local Authorities to allow trained Public Health personnel access to a limited amount of patient information. This has been restricted to the contact details of North West London patients over 50 years old, who do not live in the Grenfell area, who are eligible for but have not received COVID vaccination. The purpose is to provide those patients with direct care and to save lives by increasing the update of COVID vaccination. The legal basis for sharing is the short term COPI legislation (introduced by the secretary of state for health for just this purpose) and when the COPI legislation expires the data will be deleted. We have taken measures to ensure this data is safely transmitted and managed securely and that PH personnel are trained to understand their professional responsibilities of confidence.

The proposed data sharing agreement is:

  • Appropriate: We believe that this data sharing exercise will save lives (above)
  • Proportionate: The data is limited to the contact details of a subset of NWL patients over 50 years old, who do not live in the Grenfell area, who are eligible for but have not received COVID vaccination
  • Time limited: valid only for the duration of COPI legislation
  • Safe: We have separately approached the LAs signing this agreement who have provided assurances that the appropriate security measures are in place through the use of access control mechanism, secure data transmission, storage, management and duration/expiry of this sensitive data.
  • Legally sound: COPI is used as the legal basis but the sharing agreement is GDPR compliant, consistent with the agreed NWL structure of information sharing agreements and has been approved by the NWL Primary Care IG group.
  • Agreed: We have discussed the pros and cons of this matter in some detail with individual GPs, the vaccination programme, the NWL IG Board (where there is patient representation), Primary Care IG group, NWL CCGs and with the LLMC. Individual GP data controller will be able to decide about how to implement this sharing.

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