Patients at St Mary’s Surgery may be asked for permission to share their medical or health records when they are referred from one NHS service to another.
Your health record includes your medical history, details about your medication, vaccinations and any allergies you may have.
You can choose whether to share these full medical details between services provided to you by the NHS.
Here at St Mary’s we use a secure electronic health service records system called SystmOne. This secure computer data system can allow clinicians to share your record held here with other healthcare services. SystmOne is currently used in GP practices, child health services, community services, prisons, some hospitals, urgent care, the out of hours service and palliative care services.
How sharing in and out works
The aim of sharing is to enable faster, better connected treatment that helps the NHS deliver the best level of care for you. However, we can only share your full medical record with your permission.
You have two choices which allow you to control how your record is shared. You can change these choices at any time by letting the surgery or service know.
Sharing OUT – this means your information recorded at this practice or service can be shared with other healthcare services.
Sharing IN – this means whether or not this practice or service can view information in your record that has been entered by other services who are providing care for you, or who may provide care for you in the future.
Imagine you are receiving care from three services: your GP, a district nurse and a smoking clinic. You want your GP and district nurse to share information with each other and you want both of them to know your progress at the smoking clinic. However, you don’t want the smoking clinic to see any of your other medical information.
Your sharing choices at each practice or service would be:
- The GP can share information IN and OUT
- The district nurse can share IN and OUT
- The smoking clinic can only share information OUT but not IN.
You can change your choices at any time.
Simply let our Patient Services Team know or download and complete the form.