Access to Patient Information
Your medical record is confidential. We do however, share information among health professionals, where it is felt to be in your interest as a patient, for this to happen. With increasingly shared care between GPs, hospital doctors, nurses and allied health professionals, it is necessary to share information such as test results or the medication you are taking, so that relevant data can be available at any place where you receive care.
General practices, hospitals and the Health Board need to keep disease registers (lists of people with the same condition) so that call and recall systems can operate, and shared care can be co-ordinated.
Sometimes data will be used for research or statistical purposes related to health care planning, but in these circumstances individual patients will not be identified without their consent.
If data about you is used for education or training , where possible it will be anonymised, and if this is not possible, your consent will be required before information is used for this purpose.
Finally, as part of quality assurance, it is sometimes necessary to check individual records to ensure that agreed standards of care are being met.
Under the Data Protection Act,we are not obliged to obtain your explicit consent for sharing relevant information, but if you do have specific requests for some aspects of your health record to remain confidential, please let us know. You are entitled to register an objection which will be respected if this is possible.
Under no circumstances is information about you shared with third parties who do not directly contribute to, or support the delivery and planning of your healthcare, unless your consent has been obtained.
Accessing your Medical Record
The Data Protection Act gives you certain rights of access to the medical records we hold about you. If you wish to apply for access to your own record, you will be required to complete a Data Protection Form along with two forms of identification.