NHS Patients' Data Shared Against Their Wishes

Information about patients has been shared against their wishes, the group responsible for releasing NHS patient data has admitted.

The Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) said that it failed to meet requests by up to 700,000 patients for details from their records not to be passed on.

The group told MPs it "does not currently have the resources or processes to handle such a significant level of objections" and it also had technical issues over logging the preferences.

Patients registered their objections during the development of a giant and controversial care data system, but the plans were shelved in March 2014.

HSCIC chair Kingsley Manning said it "may take some time" to resolve the issue.

The admission was made in a letter sent in February by Mr Manning to the Commons health select committee.

Dr Beth McCarron-Nash, who leads on care data for the General Practitioners Committee (GPC), told health sector journal Pulse: "Obviously, if there are technical difficulties that HSCIC are experiencing, they must be resolved, and it is their responsibility to make sure patients are protected.

"But basically it's a mess."

Phil Booth, director of data rights advocacy group medConfidential, also lamented the data sharing.

"The material fact is, hundreds of thousands of people, last January, February, March, exercised their right to opt out of having their data passed on by the HSCIC, and that has not been respected," he told the Pulse.

In a letter responding to the claims made in the Daily Telegraph, HSCIC professional lead Professor Martin Severs said no data had been collected from GP records and patient care had not been affected for those who had registered objections.

He wrote: "We have been working with medical, legal, policy and technological experts to design a robust system that will implement these objections in a way that will not harm anyone's direct care.

"We take seriously our responsibility to protect patient information and we only share data when it is secure and legally appropriate to do so."