Patient Record

Sharing Your Medical Record

In order to deliver and coordinate your health and social care, we may sometimes share information with other organisations. We will only ever share information about you if other agencies involved in your care have a genuine need for it. Anyone who receives information from the practice is under a legal duty to keep it confidential and secure. Please be aware that there may be certain circumstances, such as assisting the police with the investigation of a serious crime, where it may be necessary for the practice to share your personal information with external agencies without your knowledge or consent.

We may share information with the following organisations:

• The GP Practices within the South Hams Primary Care Network

• Other GP Practices

• NHS Trusts/Foundation Trusts

• NHS  One Devon

• NHS Commissioning Support Units

• Community Services (District Nurses, Rehabilitation Services and out of hours services)

 • Ambulance or emergency services

• Independent contractors such as Pharmacies, Dentists and Opticians

• Local authorities • Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH)

 • Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC)

• Police and Judicial Services • Educational Services

• Fire and Rescue Services

• NHS 111

• The Care Quality Commission, ICO and other regulated auditors

• Public Health England and Screening

• NHS England

• NHS Digital

• Non-NHS health care provider

 • Research providers

• St Lukes Hospice

Summary Care Record

There is a new Central NHS Computer System called the Summary Care Record (SCR). The Summary Care Record is meant 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 central NHS computer system develops, (known as the ‘Summary Care Record’ – SCR), 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, although 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.