Record Sharing Preferences
“The duty to share information can be as important as the duty to protect patient confidentiality"
Information Governance Review March 2013 AKA Caldicott 2
Caldicott 2 recommends that safe and appropriate sharing in the interests of the individual’s direct care should be the rule, and not the exception. Increasing the visibility of patient records improves safety and reduces adverse events in the eventuality that a patient needs emergency or Out-Of Hours care…
….However, should a patient need to be opted out of the scheme for a valid reason INRstar N3's Record Sharing Preferences enable you to do this. Below the two opt out options are explained:
Open the patient's record.
Click on 
.
Click 
.
Now select or deselect the sharing preferences by clicking on the boxes right of the options:
When you are happy with your choices click 
.
SCSL follow the guidelines set out by Caldicott 2 “To share or not to share? The Information Governance Review March 2013” and these are the principles that SCSL have adopted to ensure that patient confidentiality is paramount.
Under the following heading SCSL is permitted to publish fully anonymised data (to ICO standards) for the purposes of research and to inform both clinicians and patients of the outcomes and benefits of anticoagulation treatment.
This is data is made available for use by organisations such as Public Health England, NHS England, The National Initiative on AF and NICE to improve the overall quality, service levels and patient outcomes of anticoagulation services across the whole of the UK.
Please note that the data does not include any identifiers relating to individual patients, practices, service providers or clinicians.
The Caldicott 2 review describes this type of reporting as "Data for publication":
“This is data that has been anonymised in line with the ICO anonymisation code to the point where determining individual identities from the data is unlikely, requiring unreasonable effort. The data does not require a legal or contractual basis for processing and can be publically disclosed. This data is called de-identified data for publication.”
SCSL adhere to these guidelines under all circumstances and these processes are audited under ISO27001 accreditation.
In conjunction with this SCSL are also aware of the concerns of members of the public about their data being shared in this way and so have taken note of Recommendation 7 of Caldicott 2 by allowing patient records to be excluded from anonymised reports:
Recommendation 7
“All organisations in the health and social care system should clearly explain to patients and the public how the personal information they collect could be used in de-identified form for research, audit, public health and other purposes. All organisations must also make clear what rights the individual has open to them, including any ability to actively dissent (i.e. withhold their consent).”
Should you have any questions or queries about this then please contact our Help Desk for further details.