NHS Database

Patients to be banned from deleting their records from NHS database

By Jason Lewis
05th April 2009

Patients will be banned from having their intimate health records deleted from the controversial new NHS national medical database.

The NHS is now uploading millions of people’s medical histories on to its Summary Care Record (SCR) system.

Within two years, GP surgeries, hospitals, pharmacies, ambulancemen and other NHS officials across the country will have instant access to everyone’s health records.

But last week Department of Health officials confirmed there was a blanket ban on information being removed at a patient’s request once it was on the database.

Campaigners say the system threatens patient confidentiality, is open to abuse and may be illegal.

The revelation comes amid widespread concerns over other Government surveillance systems, including the on-going legal battle to remove the genetic profiles of children and other innocent people from the police’s DNA database.

The SCR will include full details of prescriptions and health problems for which people are being treated and will be updated every time someone visits
a doctor or hospital.

The Department of Health says patients can opt out before their GP loads information from their existing medical file on to the database. But once this work, which is being carried out at individual surgeries across the country, has been completed the record will remain on the system whatever a patient’s objection.

Officials say it will be possible to ‘mask’ a patient’s record so that it cannot be viewed by clinical staff treating them. But senior Health Service officials will still be able to access records for ‘medico-legal evidential’ reasons.

In response to a Freedom of Information request, the DoH confirmed the records cannot be deleted. It said: ‘The SCR is intended to serve a number of important purposes.

'These include providing clinicians with relevant information to support care and to improve the outcomes of care, but also the necessary capacity for audit and medico-legal investigation.’

It added: ‘Whilst Ministers have determined patients need not have an SCR if they do not want one, this should not be understood to mean that once created an SCR can be completely removed.

‘The issue of audit and the medico-legal evidential significance of the SCR will be extremely important and it would be inappropriate to provide tools that could completely remove a record, even if this were feasible.’

The DoH added: ‘A GP practice may authorise the masking of an SCR and can accomplish this by uploading a blank record that prevents the previous record from being accessed.’

GP Dr Neil Bhatia, who is campaigning against the system, said NHS officials were ‘neither telling patients they can get their “visible” record blanked out, nor informing patients their uploaded data will be kept indefinitely on the NHS database and they can do nothing to reverse this’.

He added: ‘You have one chance to prevent your medical records from being stored on the NHS database for eternity.

'The only way to prevent this is by opting out of the NHS database. You cannot change your mind once your records have been uploaded.’