Do you care who sees your GP records?

I heard an item on 'Inside Health' on Radio 4 this week about this - it debunked some of the myths, and I felt a little reassured. You can get it on Iplayer (not great at links, I'm afraid).

I heard that too, Hummingbird, and it did nothing to reassure me. As I said before Pulsetoday interviewed over 400 GPs and over 40% of them were opting out with their families because they were worried about it.
Less than 40% were going along with the scheme, with 20% undecided.
However, we only have a few weeks to decide before our info can be used in ways that we will not know about. If you do not opt out, they do not have to tell you how they are using your information.
Considering that the NHS has not as yet managed to sort out its computer systems so that my GP can get information about me from a hospital 20 minutes drive away, I do not hold out much hope for the NHS being able to monitor the way this information is used.

Went to website and felt really depressed about the way the NHS is
going. Thank goodness for people like RAF.

That's true, durhamjen. It's astonishing that the IT world seems to have largely bypassed the NHS!

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/caredata

This is a survey done by the Department of Health. I found out about it on the Guardian's NHS page where Hunt had given a speech about IT last Wednesday. I doubt whether many of the population know about it.
He reckons about one third of the 111 services will be able to access GP data on us by the end of this year. Do you trust the 111 services to get things right?

Article about it in today's BMJ

Been into GP's today where they have a form ready to opt out. They complete the form and you just have to sign. Very organised.

I just had to send an email to the practice manager to put a code on my notes and that is mine sorted. Very simple.

I am confused about this. Both my hubby and I had letters through the post telling us about this and you had a section that you could fill in 'to opt out' if you wanted to. It looked like a letter that was sent out in general, no details required so I don't think it was a scam or anything!

I am not bothered about it particularly but I will say that if I was taken Ill in the middle of the night I would think it would be handy to have my records to hand.

Are you talking about the same thing, POGS?
I think that's the summary care record, which is sensible to opt into.
The care.data scheme is completely different, and you would not get letters through the post. The data from care.fata can be sold on to anyone who requests it; private healthcare companies like Bupa have already bought data from your GPs.
A GP practice in Oxfordshire, I think it was, signed up all the patients to opt out. He has now been threatened with having his licence to practice as a GP being taken away.

I do not think many people read the BMJ, Galen, or Pulse, come to that.
In yesterday's Pulse was an article stating that Monitor is to investigate how to make it easier for alternative "high quality" providers to set up GP practices in areas of low quality care.
That's how care.data will be used, to allow Bupa, Virgincare, etc. to set up practices.

If you are not sure what form you received,POGS, have a look at www.medconfidential.org and read the blog. There is a copy of the summary opt out form.
There is also an article in the same blog from the GP who is being threatened.

I will do that, I did say I was confused.

Still not bothered about it though if I am to be honest. Thanks.

RAF Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I believe we got this leaflet a few months ago and I remember giving it a cursory glance and recycling it. After reading your post I researched the situation further, discussed it with my DH and we've both opted out. There is a small poster up at the surgery, but it is very easily missed. I'm all in favour of sharing medical records to benefit medical care, but I believe this sort of sharing is the start of a very slippery slope.

Last week on the NHS choices website, someone had mistyped a link and over 300 links on the site were sent to a malware site.
Do you still trust the NHS with your information?

I've signed the petition and will be opting out at my local surgery this week.. It seems that privacy has become impossible without a battle. It was something we used to take for granted and made us feel secure. No longer the case, unfortunately.

Printed out the form from medconfidential tonight, will submit to GP surgery tomorrow. My sister is a practice manager and she is opting out, if she doesn't trust the people that employ her then neither do I.

I signed yesterday at the GP's . They only had forms specific to their practice.

I was at our surgery this morning, so asked at reception for a form. They were taking names for a collective list. They were doing it in two groups. I had the option of going on a Summary Care Record, a database available only to hospitals or other practitioners in an emergency; or also opting out of the General Practice Extraction Service (GPES) which would be available to such bodies as research organisations. Their recommendation was to opt in to the Summary Care Record, which I did. They left it up to the patient to decide about the GPES which I rejected. Anyway, the news this evening is that the whole scheme has been shelved for six months because it was not sufficiently understood. I certainly had not realised that there were the two parts of the scheme.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-26239532

Well, panic over, it's been postponed - no wonder, since so many people (not on here) were even aware of the proposal!

I gather from the media this project has been stalled for six months because of the furore about security and use of information. That's a good thing, isn't it? Maybe it won't actually happen now...

I was well aware of it and I have opted out but I have not received anything official. Ibelieve that around 1/3 of the population are like me, have received nothing.

Just realised my post should have read 'were not even aware...'
I wasn't suggesting that Gransnetters were unaware!

Have not heard anything yet, but am concerned because I realised during a visit to the senior partner in the practice he mentioned a couple of things to me about my previous history and I realised that it was not me! Somehow my records have been mixed up with someone else; not totally because most of the details were correct but some, including one fairly major operation, were not mine. I have a fairly common name, but this is not the only time this has happened apparently. We eventually went through it together and corrected mine, but don't know if the other person realises.
GP said that this must have occurred when medical records were digitalised.

Perhaps that's why the Nurse Practitioner thought I had COPD. My name's not unusual either. But the doctor I saw yesterday did have the right records - in considerable detail.