You may have received a communication recently about our practice’s plans to join the Thames Valley Shared Care Agreement. This is a data sharing agreement which allows clinical information to pass between Summertown Health Centre and other local NHS organisations including the South Central Ambulance Service, the Out Of Hours service, the Oxford University Hospital Trust and the Mental Health services. This allows clinicians who are looking after you to access your medical records and see your history and medications if they are looking after you, and to improve communication between different arms of the NHS within Oxford, Berkshire, Buckinhamshire. The TVS will replace and combine older data sharing agreements that are already in place. Data is not shared between different localities, only within Thames Valley. The lead data controller for this agreement will be Frimley Health Trust. If you wish to know more please visit www.bucksoxonberksw.icb.nhs.uk/how-we-work/digital-data/tvs-care-record
The TVS will be used primarily for the sharing of patient data for direct care i.e. for when a clinician from another service is looking after you and needs to see your medical records. Anonymised data will also be used for the purposes of risk stratification, also known as "segmentation", which may help to direct patient care towards more vulnerable people, and for healthcare planning purposes. This risk stratification is a standard of NHS care and every NHS ICB (area organisation) performs risk stratification to improve the healthcare of their patients. This will be done by a company called Graphnet within the TVS agreement. To know more about this process, please visit the following website: https://www.bucksoxonberksw.icb.nhs.uk/how-we-work/digital-data/tvs-for-segmentation/
This agreement follows all UK data protection law. Clinicians can only access your data when needed for direct care, and this access is audited. No patient data, whether identifiable or anonymised, can be sold by any NHS organisation or by Graphnet under the terms of the agreement. It is illegal for confidential patient data to be used for commercial purposes without the express consent of the patient under UK data protection law.
If you do not want your medical records to be shared as part of the TVS agreement, then you can opt out by visiting the website www.nhs.uk/your-nhs-data-matters and clicking on "Make Your Choice". This will mean that organisations such as the ambulance service or the Out Of Hours doctors will not have access to your medical records if they look after you. You can change your mind and opt in or opt out at any time.