The dame balancing clinical need and confidentiality for patients

[Northerner]

HAVING spent a lifetime serving the NHS, Dame Fiona Caldicott knows all too well the pitfalls of different health professionals failing to share information.

Now her concerns have won support from the highest possible authority as recommendations from her study into patient confidentiality are to be adopted in full by the Government.

It will more than confirm the fears of those who fear confidentiality is coming before care, and that it should be the duty of agencies to share information where it is in the interest of the patient and will lead to the correct treatment.

At the same time her review underlines the real risk of clinicians basing their decisions on inadequate information ? risks multiply when there is poor sharing of information between care teams.

http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/10...inical_need_and_confidentiality_for_patients/

 

[AlisonM]

Having been an IT professional and seen the way data is treated within the NHS from the inside I have serious concerns about the privacy and security of my data. I would be very reluctant to trust the so-called professionals to get data to the right place as needed, but would happily carry my health data around with me on something like a USB stick.

Having said that, my surgery and the Diabetic clinic seem to be sharing info without problems, so far at least. Other clinics I attend however, are out of the loop and tend to act in isolation from each other and from the surgery. That may be part of the reason finding a diagnosis for whatever is wrong with me is proving so difficult.

Dame Fiona seems to be on the right track, I think.