Read/Download our GDPR – Privacy Notice for General Practice
Patient Letter
The data held in the GP medical records of patients is used every day to support health and care planning and research in England, helping to find better treatments and improve patient outcomes for everyone. NHS Digital has developed a new way to collect this data, called the General Practice Data for Planning and Research (GPDPR) data collection.
This data will be shared from 1 July 2021. Data may be shared from the GP medical records about:
- any living patient registered at a GP practice in England when the collection started – this includes children and adults
- any patient who died after 1 July 2021, and was previously registered at a GP practice in England when the data collection started
NHS Digital will not collect patients’ names or addresses. Any other data that could directly identify patients (such as NHS Number, date of birth, full postcode) is replaced with unique codes which are produced by de-identification software before the data is shared with NHS Digital.
However, it is important to realise that this data is only pseudo-anonymised.
Sharing data within the health service is enormously useful and is essential to planning for example during the current pandemic.
However, there are concerns by some that this data is being made available to third party organisations outside the NHS including those paying to use this data for commercial enterprises.
Please see the link below for a useful blog on this:
GP Data Sharing – Dr Bhatti.com
We have been given no option other than to enable this data sharing. However, you can opt-out.
If you don’t want your identifiable patient data to be shared for purposes except for your own care, you can opt-out by registering a Type 1 Opt-out or a National Data Opt-out, or both. These opt-outs are different, and they are explained in more detail below. Your individual care will not be affected if you opt-out using either option.
For more information, please visit www.nhs.uk/your-nhs-data-matters/ and digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/data-collections-and-data-sets/data-collections/general-practice-data-for-planning-and-research