Data Sharing

Patient referrals

With your agreement, your GP or Nurse may refer you to other services and healthcare providers not provided by the practice, or they may work with other services to provide your care in the practice. Once you have been seen for your referral, the other health care provider will normally tell us about the treatment they have provided for you and any follow up which the GPs need to provide. This information is then included in your GP record.

Local Hospital, Community or Social Care Services

Sometimes the clinicians caring for you need to share some of your information with others who are also supporting you. This could include hospital or community based specialists, nurses, health visitors, therapists or social care services.

Summary Care Record (SCR)

A Summary Care Record is an electronic record of important patient information, created from the GP medical records. It contains information about medication you are taking, any allergies you suffer from and any bad reactions to medications you have previously had. It can be seen and used by authorised staff in other areas of the health and care system involved in your direct care. Giving healthcare staff access to this information can prevent mistakes being made when caring for you in an emergency or when your GP practice is closed. Your Summary Care Record also includes your name, address, date of birth and your unique NHS Number to help identify you correctly. If you and your GP decide to include more information it can be added to the Summary Care Record, but only with your express permission.

For more information visit https://digital.nhs.uk/summary-care-records/patients

Care and Health Information Exchange (CHIE)

The CHIE is an electronic summary record for people living in Hampshire, Portsmouth and Southampton. GP Surgeries, hospitals, social care and community care teams collect information about you and store it electronically on separate computer systems. The Care and Health Information Exchange stores summary information from these organisations in one place so that – with your consent – professionals can view it to deliver better care to you. This record contains more information than the SCR, but is only available to organisations in Hampshire.

For more information visit: https://careandhealthinformationexchange.org.uk/

National Screening Services

There are some national services like the National Cancer Screening Programme that collect and keep information from across the NHS. This is how the NHS knows when to contact you about services like cervical, breast or bowel cancer screening. Often you have the right to not allow these organisations to have your information.

You can find out more about how the NHS holds and shares your information for national programmes on the NHS Choices website.

Other NHS organisations

Sometimes the practice shares information with other organisations that do not directly treat you, for example, Clinical Commissioning Groups. Normally, it will not be possible to identify you from this information. This information is used to plan and improve services. The information collected includes data such as the area patients live, age, gender, ethnicity, language preference, country of birth and religion. The CCG also collects information about whether patients have long term conditions such as diabetes; blood pressure, cholesterol levels and medication. However, this information is anonymous and does not include anything written as notes by the GP and cannot be linked to you.

Telephone Calls

All our incoming telephone calls are recorded for training and monitoring purposes for a period of 6 months. These are held on a secure, password encrypted hard drive and are deleted at the end of the retention period.

General Practice Data for Planning and Research

Patients personal confidential data will be extracted and shared with NHS Digital in order to support vital health and care planning and research. Further information can be found here

Patients may opt out of having their information shared for Planning or Research by applying a National Data Opt Out or a Type 1 Opt Out.  Details of how to Opt Out can be found on our Privacy Notice.  For the National Data Opt Out patients are required to register their preference below. https://www.nhs.uk/your-nhs-data-matters/

For Type 1 Opt Out patients can complete the form and return it to their registered practice for action by the 23^rd June 2021. https://nhs-prod.global.ssl.fastly.net/binaries/content/assets/website-assets/data-and-information/data-collections/general-practice-data-for-planning-and-research/type-1-opt-out-form.docx

The legal basis for this activity can be found at this link : General Practice Data for Planning and Research: NHS Digital Transparency Notice – NHS Digital

Legal Basis : The legal basis for this activity can be found at this link : General Practice Data for Planning and Research: NHS Digital Transparency Notice – NHS Digital

Local Data Sharing Arrangements

The practice currently has three data sharing agreements which are in place:

1.Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust, our community services provider

This agreement allows the Integrated Care Teams (community nurses, physiotherapists and occupational therapists) being able to access GP information about people on their caseload who have recently been discharged from hospital or who are housebound, or who require longer term rehabilitation from the GP record. This information can be read by the healthcare professional to improve the patients care, but they are not able to amend the GP medical record.

2. Totton Primary Care Network

An agreement is under development between Testvale Surgery and New Horizons Medical Partnership (Totton Health Centre and Forestgate Surgery) to allow sharing patient information for our social prescriber and clinical pharmacist which will be shared between the organisations. This will also make it easier for patients to be seen at any GP practice in Totton should it be necessary, for example, during extended hours periods. Data may also be shared to ensure effective call and recall programmes, for example for the coronavirus vaccination programme.

3. Frailty Support Team

The SHFT Frailty Team have access to the patient records at the practice to enable them to review the clinical information to provide support to appropriate patients.  They will also maintain a record within the SHFT clinical record. The legal basis for this sharing falls under 6.1.e – under authority of a contract to deliver NHS services and 9.2.h – delivery and management of direct health care. Common Law Duty of Confidence – explicit consent

Other local agreements

Testvale Surgery has an agreement to allow the medicines management team at West Hampshire CCG to access the clinical system to view prescribing data for the practice and to undertake medication reviews on specific patients. The medicines optimisation team also undertakes prescribing audit on behalf of the practice. This information is used to help improve quality, safety and cost effectiveness of prescribing.

Testvale Surgery has agreed a memorandum of understanding with West Hampshire CCG in regard to the Referral Support Service. This service assists the practice in improving the quality and accuracy of referrals made by our clinical team. All referrals (excluding urgent cancer referrals) are made through the service, which co-ordinates the most appropriate clinic for the patient to be seen in to enable the patient to be seen in the right place, first time. Additionally feedback is provided to the referring clinician where required to help improvements in future referrals.

Solent Mind. All patients with Serious Mental Illness are required to have a physical health check each year, this ensures their general health is managed which otherwise could deteriorate as a result of their mental illness. Solent Mind carry out some of the health checks on behalf of our practice. Legal basis – 6.1.e under the NHS Contract. Lawful basis – 9.2.h to manage patient health care.