The NHS has been accused of scaring patients into agreeing to have their personal information included on the national electronic records database.
The system, also known as the care summary record, aims to make it easier for medical staff to get access to patients’ medical histories but it has been hampered by difficulties including technical problems. A national roll-out of the system was cancelled last month after it was found that data could have been logged onto the system without the patient’s knowledge.
Now, Connecting for Health, the agency responsible for rolling out the new system, has said that patients who opt out could face ‘adverse consequences’ and has put a document on its website warning of the dangers faced by patients if they continue to have their medical information stored on paper files. It warns of possible lost records and prescribing errors. The document acknowledges the confidentiality issues but says that “it is misleading to suggest that not having such a record is risk free”.
Over 1.25 million patients already have their records on the database which can eventually hold up to 50 million records.
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