GPs blow whistle to watchdog on patient record privacy threat

The HSCIC isn't really new. It is a renamed / branded NHS Information Centre, although it previously didn't gather primary care (your GPs) records. What it did already do was gather secondary care (hospital admissions, A&E etc) and so already had all that data. This data was then accessible by PCTs for financial purposes / analysis and also by anyone else who coughed up the relevant funds and was deemed worthy. With the latest attempts to demolish the NHS however only the HSCIC has the legal right to access this non pseudonymised secondary care data. Not even the CCGs can currently do so due to yet another monumental DoH cock up and so GPs are currently being told they can't see the data for their own patients.

These third parties being talked of are the providers of the GP computer systems, the developers of things like SystmOne. It is my, possibly erroneous understanding as they might have a web based version now, that the only involvement they have is in writing the code to push the data to the HSCIC from their software.

Privacy and the NHS? Don't make me laugh...

If you are under the impression that your medical data is safe within the NHS, you haven't worked for them. We receive at least one unencrypted record of patient data a week over ordinary email.

The staff are poorly trained and encryption software is non-existent.

Require and request

"the Health and Social Care Information Centre has the power ... ‘to require and request provision of information’"

I have the power to require and request £10M, but I don't seem to be getting it. Check out Henry IV part 1:

Glendower I can call spirits from the vasty deep.

Hotspur Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them?

Nurse: Draw the curtains!

Confidentiality in the NHS is currently on the Liverpool Care Pathway. All the ICO is trying to do is make sure that the curtains are drawn round the bed in which it is being given a deliberate overdose of morphine.