Your doctors, the staff at this practice and everyone else who works within the NHS have a legal duty to maintain the highest level of confidentiality about patient information.

Information about you, your medical treatment and family background may be recorded, either on paper or in computer files, as part of providing you with health services.

We need to keep this information in order to provide proper care for you and to allow others to check the treatment that you have received.

• Read the NHS Confidentiality Code
• Read the NHS Care Record Guarantee

Sharing Your Medical Information

Make sure you indicate which programmes you do not wish to be included in and return the form to the surgery at your earliest convenience.

It is important that health and social care professionals have access to basic information about patients and people they care for.

This means your medical information is sometimes shared by your GP with other authorised healthcare staff via fax or telephone.

Local and national programmes have been introduced to now share this information electronically and securely.

Summary Care Record (SCR)

The NHS in England is using a national electronic record called the Summary Care Record (SCR) to support patient care. The Summary Care Record is a copy of key information from your GP record. It will contain information about the medicines you take, allergies you suffer from and any bad reactions to medicines you have had. It provides authorised healthcare staff with faster, secure access to essential information about you when you need unplanned care or when your GP practice is closed. Summary Care Records improve the safety and quality of your care.

For more information visit www.digital.nhs.uk.

Local sharing via My Care Record

The NHS in Bucks has introduced My Care Record, an electronic view of your GP record that can be accessed locally when you need treatment from somebody other than your own GP. At no point are copies of the record created, copied or kept once the enquiry is complete.

My Care Record contains key information from your GP practice including the medicines you are taking, allergies you suffer from and any bad reactions to medicines you have had in the past.

If you have an accident or fall ill, the people caring for you in places like Accident and Emergency departments, Minor Injury Unit and GP out of hours services will be better equipped to treat you if they have this information.

My Care Record will only be available to authorised health and social care staff locally, and they will ask your permission before they look at it (unless they are unable to ask you, in which case the access will be logged to ensure it was for a clinical reason.)

For more information about My Care Record, read these documents:

• Patient Leaflet
• FAQs