GPs ‘concerned’ over NHS data security
GPs have serious concerns about the security of a new electronic record system being introduced in the NHS, a new survey finds.
A poll by Medix research for The Guardian finds 62 per cent of GPs and 56 per cent of hospitals fear “outsiders hacking into the system” of e-records.
The national database is a key part of a £6.2 billion upgrade of NHS IT systems, and will be introduced alongside electronic prescriptions and a new appointments booking service.
Today’s poll finds that 51 per cent of GPs and 65 per cent of hospital doctors think putting patient records on a central database will allow them to “make better decisions by having easy access to a complete up to date record of clinical information”.
But 62 per cent of GPs and 51 per cent of hospital doctors expressed concern about public officials outside the health or social care sectors having access to clinical data. Some feared patients may be subject to blackmail or bribery as a result.
Consequently, more than half (51 per cent) of GPs said they were unwilling to upload a patients details onto the national electronic database without the individual’s specific consent – despite the government’s plan to upload everything automatically.
Hamish Meldrum, chairman of the British Medical Association’s (BMA’s) GP committee, said it acknowledged the potential benefits to patient care of an electronic records system, but warned patients must be told who has access to their details.
“The BMA prefers an approach that is based on obtaining patients’ explicit consent rather than the system of implied consent favoured by Connecting for Health – the organisation in charge of the new health record,” he said.
He added: “Doctors fear that uploading clinical data without explicitly asking the patient could jeopardise the trusting relationship so valued by patients and their doctors.”
A spokesman for Connecting for Health welcomed today’s poll as recognition that most doctors favoured the new records system.
“The law constrains how a national database must operate, but it does not prevent the creation of such a database, nor does it prevent the merger of existing databases for efficiency and safety reasons, as is being done to create the central summary clinical record,” he said.
“The Department of Health believes that this will be of great benefit to a great majority of people, improving healthcare and preventing unnecessary deaths.”
The information commissioner, Richard Thomas, has stated that no-one outside the NHS would have access to patient records unless a court decides disclosures is in the “overriding public interest”.
However, Liberal Democrat health spokesman John Pugh said doctors had “legitimate concerns”, and warned: “There is a danger the public interest exception may be used as convenient catch-all to justify any kind of snooping by a public body.
“Patients and doctors need to know how access to this highly personal information is to be controlled in practice, and how unnecessary intrusion into a very private sphere is to be identified and prevented.”
