§ Mr. SymsTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what procedures are in place to enable a person to access patients' records made before 1 November 2001. [73906]
§ Mr. LammyThe Data Protection Act 1998, which came into force in March 2000, enables individuals to apply for access to their health records, regardless of when their records were created. The Access to Health Records Act 1990, which came in to force in November 1991 governs rights of access to the health records of deceased persons.
§ Mr. SymsTo ask the Secretary of State for Health how many requests to access patient records were made in(a) 2000 and (b) 2001 under the Data Protection Act 1998. [73907]
§ Mr. SymsTo ask the Secretary of State for Health how many representations have been received by the Information Commissioner on access to patients' records being refused in each year since 1990. [73905]
818W
§ Mr. LammyI have been informed by the Office of the Information Commissioner that it holds general information about the number of enquiries and complaints it has received regarding health matters under the Data Protection Act 1998 since it came in to force on 1 March 2000, but it does not hold details of the specific issues involved in each case. Prior to this date the majority of requests for access to health records were governed by the Access to Health Records Act 1990, but no information is held centrally on numbers of requests or refusals.
§ Mr. SymsTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what mechanisms his Department has put in place to remove the variations between trusts in the standard of structure and content of patient records. [73909]
§ Mr. LammyThe delivery of electronic records is being taken forward in implementing the national strategic programmeDelivering 21st Century IT—Support for the NHS which was announced by my noble Friend, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (the Lord Hunt of Kingsheath) following the publication of Delivering the NHS Plan on 11 June 2002. One of the key aspects of phase one of the programme requires all primary care trusts and National Health Service trusts and hospitals to implement elements of electronic patient records by December 2005.
To support the NHS toward delivering this vision the Department in July 2002 published for consultation the National Specification for the Integrated Care Records Service to take forward the life-long heath record service. The key feature of the programme is the shift to a more corporate, national approach to deliver information technology in the NHS. This represents a step-change from the current arrangements whereby systems are typically provided for individual organisations in each health care sector. For electronic records this change means that there will be a national approach to procurement resulting in services conforming to national standards, which will include record structure and some content standards. The resulting services will be able to inter-operate with emerging national services such as the electronic staff record and the health record infrastructure. The aim being to ensure that all electronic record systems are fully compliant with national standards and specifications by December 2007.
§ Mr. SymsTo ask the Secretary of State for Health how many requests were made to access health records for deceased persons in each year since the Access to Health Records Act 1990 came into force. [73908]