"Fears grow over open access to patient records"

Why does it seem like it's all about profits for big business? Big healthcare?

Screwing the average working family?

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The relationship of confidentiality between doctor and patient may be ending. From next year, our medical records are likely to be seen by many more people, in addition to our GP, hospital doctor or nurse, and potentially used in different ways, including by private companies aiming to increase their profits, without our consent being required.

Early in 2014, all 22m households in England are to receive a leaflet on the "care.data" programme, being run by an offshoot of NHS England, the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC). Its role is to harness information in patient records to use in planning, commissioning and improving health services, in line with a pledge by David Cameron to open up the use of patient information to NHS planners and commercial companies. A large part of the remit is to sell "aggregate" patient information to the private sector. The General Practice Extraction Service will start to download details of patients' conditions, treatment and medical histories from GP-held records and build a central database, unless patients opt out.

There are growing concerns that the use of patient data has the potential to damage the relationship between patient and doctor. Some critics fear that many patients will be more reluctant to have an open discussion with their GP or consultant if they suspect that information could be shared with outside bodies, within the NHS and the private sector and be stored for future use, without their consent.