§ Sandra GidleyTo ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) what plans he has to allow NHS Direct workers to have access to individual medical records; [144958]
(2) under what circumstances nurses working for NHS Direct have access to individual medical records; and if he will make a statement. [144959]
§ Ms StuartNHS Direct nurses have access to a patient's previous NHS Direct consultations at that site. They do not have access to medical records held by other health service providers.
By the end of 2001–02, all NHS Direct sites will write NHS Direct patient records to one central database, ensuring that wherever a patient called NHS Direct from, the information given in previous calls can be used to help assess the immediate issue.
The strategic information objectives for the whole National Health Service were given in the "Information for Health Strategy", which stated that:
patients can be confident that the NHS professionals caring for them have reliable and rapid access, 24 hours a day, to the relevant personal information necessary to support their care.The target for implementing this is March 2005.
A copy of the "Information for Health Strategy" is available in the Library.