You may have heard recently of the Government's plans to keep a "Summary Care Record" of all UK residents health records.
This will involve a central database containing the medical records of everyone in the United Kingdom.
This clearly raises issues of confidentiality as the Government's record on keeping classified and sensitive information safe is not very good.
There are a few advantages in having a centrally kept record, eg. When treated as an emergency in an A&E department out of hours, a summary of your medical records will be available.
However, we believe it should be the patients choice whether or not they want to be included on this database, rather than inclusion being the default option as it is at present.
It is important that patients, and parents/guardians of under 16 yr olds are fully aware of this information, and we would urge you to read as much about it as possible.
To read futher please go to here
or here for The Big Opt Out campaign
If you choose to opt out of the scheme, then you will need to complete a form and bring it along to the surgery.
This form can be downloaded here