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 sharing of the data held by a health provider out 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.

There is a Central NHS Computer System called the Emergency Care Summary (ECS). The Emergency Care Summary is meant to help emergency doctors and nurses help you when you contact them when the surgery is closed. It will contain information on your medications and allergies.

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

As with all 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. If you don’t want an Emergency Care Summary to be made for you, tell your GP surgery. Don’t forget that if you do have an Emergency Care Summary, you will be asked if staff can look at it every time they need to. You don’t have to agree to this.

On Monday 13^th March 2023 Mount Chambers Surgery experienced a data breach. Confidential paper waste spilled out onto the pavement whilst being collected by our confidential waste disposal company. Due to the high winds experienced on this day some of the confidential waste blew into areas surrounding the surgery. Upon being made aware of the data breach staff members worked as quickly and efficiently as they could to gather all information that could be seen and reached.

We ask please that should you come across any information that you believe is in relation to this incident that you return this to the practice so we can dispose of this appropriately. We ask that you do not disclose, copy, or distribute any of the information or take any action in reliance to its contents, to do so is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful.

The surgery has raised the incident with the Information Commissioners Office, notified our local Information Governance Lead at the ICB, raised the incident as significant event as well as reported the incident to our Confidential Waste Disposals head office.

The surgery has endeavoured to collect all the information and we hope that nobody is affected by this incident. The surgery offers its sincerest apologises that this incident occurred and for any concern this may cause.