IMPORTANT CHANGES TO YOUR MEDICAL RECORDS
GP practices nationwide will soon be required to supply patients’ personal and confidential medical
information, on a regular and continuous basis, to the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC).
This information will be extracted from the practice in a form that can identify you (i.e. it will not be
anonymised), and will include your NHS number, date of birth, postcode, gender and ethnicity.
Under the Health and Social Care Act 2012, GP practices have no choice but to allow the HSCIC to extract
this information.
The programme, called care.data, is administered by the HSCIC using software and services provided by a
private sector company (ATOS). The data will be stored on HSCIC national servers and not on GP systems.
The HSCIC will administer the data, and states it intends to use it “for planning health services and for
research”. This is known as “secondary uses” of your medical records.
Once the data has been extracted, the GP practice is no longer the data controller for that information, and
cannot control or protect in any way how that information is used, shared or who has access to it. The HSCIC
will be the data controller for your uploaded information and will have total control over it.
Although GP practices cannot object to this information leaving the practice, individual patients and their
families can instruct their practice to prohibit the transfer of their data, i.e. you have the right to opt out.
Opting out will have no effect on the medical care that you receive either from your GP surgery or from
anywhere else within the NHS or private sector. Opting out will have no effect on your GP surgery and the
way it provide services.
If you do nothing, i.e. if you do not opt out, then your medical information will be extracted and
uploaded to the HSCIC.
You will still need to opt out to prevent care.data uploads even if you have already opted out of the NHS
Database (The Summary Care Record). The NHS Database opt-out will not prevent care.data uploads.
There is a lot of information available about care.data, which you may choose to refer to before you decide on
whether you wish to opt out or not. Web-links to this information are included in this factsheet.
Information about care.data
NHS England/HSCIC
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Patient information booklet (“How information about you helps us to provide better care”)
http://tinyurl.com/cdptinfo
Patient “FAQs” http://tinyurl.com/cdptfaqs
Web site: http://www.nhs.uk/caredata
medConfidential
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Patient leaflet http://tinyurl.com/mccdinfo
Web site: http://medconfidential.org/
How do I opt out?
If you do not want the HSCIC to proceed with the automatic extraction and upload of your confidential medical
information then please complete our opt-out form overleaf.
If you do have concerns regarding the treatment of patients' confidential medical information under the Health
and Social Care Act 2012 then you might want to contact your local MP.
WHITCHURCH SURGERY
Opt-out from secondary use of patient identifiable data
Please could you add the relevant “electronic flags” (read codes 9Nu0 and 9Nu4) to my/our medical
records, in order to ensure:

that personal confidential information is not uploaded from the GP records to the Health
and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) via the General Practice Extraction Service
(GPES) or other means

that personal confidential information gathered from any health and social care setting is
prevented from leaving the HSCIC
I/We understand the implications of this request:

that it will not affect the medical care that I/We receive either from the GP surgery or
from anywhere within the NHS or the private sector

that this refusal does not in any way prohibit the GP surgery from sharing my medical
information with other NHS and private services, where necessary, to provide effective
clinical care

that I/We can change our mind at any time about this refusal

that I/We will inform you if we subsequently decide to opt back into this system
Please print below the details of those wishing to opt out:
Full Name
DOB
Date
Signature