ACCESS TO RECORDS
Please note – this will not affect patients who have previously requested, and been granted, access to their online record.
For all other patients, information on how to obtain access is available on our website:
About Our Surgery – Barwell & Hollycroft Medical Centres (barwellmedicalcentre.co.uk)
From the 31st October 2023 all new patients will be given online access unless you OPT OUT during the registration process.
How will this work for young people (13 to 15 year olds) who have been given access
This change to records access will only apply to people aged 16 years or older. If a young person is Gillick competent they may already have access to their records so it is still necessary to screen information for these patients.
People with online accounts set up before their 16th birthday will receive access to records entered after their 16th birthday when they turn 16.
Proxy access will not change.
Why have I not been allowed access or there are parts missing?
It is our job to keep patients safe. If there are reasons to believe that some information may be harmful to patients, there is safeguarding information or we think that patient safety is at risk we may stop you from having access. Things like:
- severe mental health issues,
- domestic violence (we may withhold your access if you have discussed this with a GP and we think there is a risk the perpetrator may get access to your phone and see this information),
- if there have been concerns raised about abuse or safeguarding issues
- coercion in the past to control a patient.
We may hide certain parts of your online record, or very rarely block access completely, if we have concerns. We would be happy to explain this to you if you would like to discuss it.
If you have asked for access and this has been declined after preliminary assessment, we will write to you to inform you that your request is rejected. If you feel that this is incorrect and that there should be nothing harmful on your record then please inform us so that this can be looked into in more depth.
The Opt in approach is not what the government are saying is happening, why is this practice different?
We have sought advice from the BMC who believe that the risk to patient safety with a mass switch on, and release of data, is too high. We believe that there is not enough understanding of what information is held by us and not enough scrutiny into how it could endanger some of our most vulnerable patients. Below is our up to date Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) that shows how we have come to the conclusion that patients should opt into receiving their data, rather than automatically being granted access.
DPIA-Access-to-Records-BMC-V1-1.pdf