A  secret plan by the Government to resurrect their failed attempt at openly harvesting everyone’s NHS medical records and construct a giant database enabling any organisation to buy these records containing private and sensitive medical records of every single person in the UK, has been buried within a review document, Caldecott Report; and made public on the very day of the enquiry into the Iraq War was published.

The timing of the release was
designed specifically to bury the whole issue of the national database contianing everybodies personal medical records, previously known as Care.data

What is different from the previous plan, care.data which we were all told about, is that having told us that care.data is being scrapped, this time on the back of that buried announcement; they intend to construct this database and sell it, without even asking for our consent or indeed telling us!

That is both, immoral and underhanded, not to mention dishonest.

It is even more astonishing when you know that the Government is currently going through a public consulation exercise on the security of medical and care data records and how it is shared, following it’s Caldecot Report which resulted in the scrapping of Care.data!

The Caldecot Review proposes ten data security standards relating to Leadership, People, Processes and Technology.

In the foreward of the consultation document, National Data Guardian for
Health and Care’s Review of
Data Security, Consent and
Opt-Outs; Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Hunt MP says:

"…..last September, we asked both the Care Quality Commission and Dame Fiona Caldicott, the National Data Guardian for Health and Care, to review data security across health and care. We also asked Dame Fiona to propose a number of new data security standards to be applied in all NHS and social care organisations, and to set out options for a new consent/opt-out model for data sharing, so that people clearly understand the choices available to them about how their personal confidential information will be used."

Despite this, the Government still want to provide anyone willing to pay, the full data on everyone’s medical records.

The pressure group Sum Of Us has alerted the public and has drawn up a petition against these appalling Government plans.

In an email to all followers, Sum Of Us reports on the plans and provides a link to the petition:

"The government review into the care.data scheme was published earlier this month and it recommended the scheme we fought so hard against be scrapped. This sounds like a victory, but buried in the report is a new worrying scheme to sell our medical records to big corporations.

The government’s review proposes to allow our medical records from your family doctor, (possibly including our NHS Numbers, diagnoses, referrals, prescriptions along with our post codes and date of birth) to be uploaded to a giant national database — but this time without telling us or asking for our consent!

One of the schemes to replace care.data is called the “Single GP dataset”. The government’s review into care.data proposes to send all patient records from family GPs to the central database without the express consent of patients.

Once in the system, it can be “sold” to any customers of the ‘Health and Social Care Information centre”, including private companies.

The government buried this announcement on the day

of the report into the Iraq War.

It is hoping no one will notice this new land grab on our medical records. We can’t allow the government to sneak out the same medical record data scheme under a different name.

Our community successfully fought the original care.data scheme.

Thanks to the power of our community we rose up and forced the government to backtrack and ultimately scrap the scheme. Now the government is hoping to flog off our medical records, but this time under a new name and without those pesky safeguards. We have to act to stop the privatisation of our medical records.

Can you sign this petition to Jeremy Hunt & Theresa May demanding they scrap this new attempt to sell our medical records?"

Whilst the detail in the email is basic enough and is factually correct, you can check yourself here via the Government’s own announcement.

If you wish to sign the petition to stop your medical records from being sold off to insurance companies, local authorities, local police authorities, drug companies, private healthcare companies, and even dentists, beauty salon chains and the likes of Boots and BUPA; you can do so here

Download the Caldicott report here

Download National Data Guardian for
Health and Care’s Review of
Data Security, Consent and
Opt-Outs public consultation

Source: SumOfUs / Dept of Health / medConfidential / Gov.UK