Local Care Record and Data Sharing

We aim to better inform you about two different programmes concerning the sharing of your health care data. Care.Data is a national programme and the Local Care Record is a locally initiated project.

Local Care Record

Sharing your information within the local health service in Lambeth. Your local NHS organisations in Lambeth have a duty to keep complete, accurate and up-to-date information about your health, so that you can receive the best possible care.

Sometimes the people caring for you need to share some of your information with others that are also supporting you. This could include GPs, hospital based specialists, nurses and health visitors.

To enable this information sharing to happen more quickly and to improve the care you receive, a new process has been put in place in Lambeth called the Local Care Record.

Through existing computer systems, this will join up care records held on your GP practice with the 3 main local hospital organisations, namely Guy’s & St Thomas’, King’s College Hospital and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trusts.
Information is only shared when it is needed to make your care and treatment safer, easier and faster and only with those people directly involved in your care. This could include allowing a hospital doctor to see the medication that a GP has prescribed for you when you go into hospital or allowing a GP to see what care, tests or treatment you received while in hospital.

The doctor or healthcare professional treating you will inform you that they are accessing your shared Local Care Record. However, in an emergency situation where you may not be conscious or able to give consent, they will access your information to give you the best care.

Above all the Local Care Record will allow professionals supporting you to work with you to make safer and better decisions about your care.

To find out how to opt out (should you wish to) ask our receptionists to add read code “93C1” to your record; read codes are essentially flags with our computer systems. Should you choose to opt out we must point out that this may effect the care you receive.

Care.Data

Confidential and identifiable data from your health record could be shared with the Health and Social Care Information Centre (national provider of information, data and IT systems for health and social care) and approved third parties. We want to ensure that you are fully aware of all the facts so you can make an informed decision whether you want to limit the sharing of your data. This can be done by the use of what we call “Read Codes”, read codes are essentially flags with our computer systems. Below you will find a diagram about how your data could be shared and what read codes you can request be placed on your health record to prevent data extraction.

For further detailed information information visit www.nhs.uk/caredata.