The confidentiality of medical records is threatened by government plans to relax laws on data protection, doctors' leaders told the Guardian yesterday. Dr Hamish Meldrum, chairman of the British Medical Association, said the profession was "extremely concerned" about legislation tabled by Jack Straw, the justice secretary, which would allow the Department of Health to share information on NHS databases with other ministries and private companies.
GPs’ representatives voted overwhelmingly this week for a system in which patients opt in to any sharing of medical data with third parties—rather than one in which their consent is assumed unless they opt out, the system favoured by the Department of Health. Clinical confidentiality depends on GPs being the prime data holder of their patients’ medical records, said the BMA’s annual conference of local medical committee representatives in London. It also strongly opposed using implied consent as justification for releasing information on named patients.
The government says it will ban all private transplants of organs from dead donors in the UK. The move comes after media reports of overseas patients paying to get onto the waiting list for organs donated by British people. An independent report said organs were scarce and no one should be able to pay for transplants, to ensure NHS patients did not miss out. Surgeons said it should reassure people organs went to those in most need.
GPs are considering whether to abandon their involvement in a scheme to put medical records on a computer database. BBC News understands that talks are continuing to try to make it easier for patients to opt out of the system. Thirty million people in England have already been formally contacted about the computer record. Health ministers from the coalition government insist the rollout will continue.
One in three GPs in clinical commissioning groups are linked to private firms, study finds One in three GPs who are running new organisations that are about to be given £65bn of the NHS's budget also help run or hold shares in a private healthcare firm, a study shows. The disclosure has sparked concern that such widespread conflicts of interest will threaten patients' trust in GPs, who they may see as lining their own pockets out of public funds.
Robert Francis, the inquiry chairman, said that one of his top priorities was for the NHS constitution to be rewritten, making it explicit that “patients are put first” and “everything done by the NHS should be informed by this ethos”. He recommended that the Health Secretary also consider stipulating that NHS staff “put patients before themselves”.