Patient Record

We ask for information about you only so you can receive the best possible care and treatment - please read the NHS website information about your NHS Health record if you have any questions about this.

Patient records are kept electronically on our practice systems, primarily on our EmisWeb clinical system. As the data controller of patients' personal confidential data, GP practices have a duty to protect the data they hold.  Read more about how we handle your information, including using data for audit and research.

Everyone working in the NHS has a legal duty to maintain the highest level of confidentiality about patient information.  We only pass information concerning you to people who have a genuine need for it.  Whenever we can we shall remove details that identify you as an individual.  Please see our Confidentiality page for more information.

Increasingly, patient medical data is shared between health organisations, in order to give clinicians access to the most up to date information when patients present.

The systems we operate require that any sharing of medical information is consented to by patients beforehand.  Patients must consent to sharing of the data held by a health provider out to other health providers and must also consent to which of the other providers can access their data.

The Personal Demographics Service (PDS) - a national electronic database of NHS patient demographic details such as name, address, date of birth and NHS Number.  The PDS enables a patient to be readily identified by the NHS quickly and accurately; it does not hold any clinical or sensitive data however all data-sharing is based on the PDS aka 'the Spine'.

You cannot opt-out of your information being held on the PDS database however in special circumstances there is a process for flagging a record as ‘sensitive’ which means that healthcare professionals will only be able to see NHS Number, name, date of birth and gender - no other demographic details will be displayed.  If you require your record flagging, or for this flag to be removed, contact us and we will liaise with NHS Digital to action this as appropriate.  This can be useful, e.g. for victims of domestic violence or people in a witness protection program, however flagging your record is not an action to be undertaken lightly - your demographic information will still be held nationally and having your details unavailable locally will mean you cannot be referred to hospital consultants or other NHS services via the e-Referral service, or have your prescriptions electronically transferred to a pharmacy via the EPS service. 

The national data opt-out was introduced on 25th May 2018, enabling patients to opt-out from the use of their data for research or planning purposes, in line with the recommendations of the National Data Guardian in her review of Data Security, Consent and Opt-outs. 

The national data opt-out replaces the previous "Type 2" opt-out, which required NHS Digital not to use a patient's confidential patient information for purposes beyond their individual care, for planning or Research. Any patient that had a type 2 opt-out recorded on or before 11.10.2018 has had it automatically converted to a national data opt-out.

If you do not want to share your personal confidential data used for planning or research, you can register a National Data Opt out by visiting nhs.uk/your-nhs-data-matters 

17th July 2023 Fireclay Health is compliant with the National Data Opt Out Policy (NDOP).

Patients may opt out of having their personal confidential data being extracted or shared by the GP practice for purposes other than individual direct care.

If patients wish to apply a Type 1 Opt Out to their record, they should make their wishes known to the Practice manager. 

The Summary Care Record (SCR) is an England-wide system that takes information from patient's GP record and makes it available to clinicians anywhere in the country.

The core SCR record is limited to Medication and Allergies however patients who are frail or have complex health needs may wish to provide consent for additional SCR data release, which adds additional information and supporting free text onto their core Summary Care Record, including significant medical history, reason for medication and end of life care information.  More information is available in the SCR leaflet (2 page pdf).  Please discuss with your GP if you would like consent for additional SCR data release recorded on your record.

Connecting Care is a local system that makes the summary information from a patient’s record available to hospitals and Out of Hours services in the BNSSG area (Bristol, North Somerset & South Gloucestershire).

You can obtain more information by visiting the Connecting Care website which includes a link to the opt-out form you will need to complete if you do not want your data available within the Connecting Care record.  This form must be returned to Connecting Care to action, NOT to us.  

This practice participates in the National Diabetes Audit - see information leaflet (2 page pdf).  

This is an annual extraction of data using your NHS number and date of birth to link information from your GP record and hospital records to assess diabetes care. 

If you do not want information taken from your GP records for this audit, please let us know - we will need to add a code to your record to ensure your data is not extracted.

We share information with the Diabetic Eye Screening service - see Public Health England (PHE) Screening for more information.

This is so that everyone eligible can be invited for screening by the Bristol & Weston Diabetic Eye Screening Programme in a timely fashion.

If you are diabetic and do not want your information shared with the Screening service, please let us know - we will need to add a code to your record to ensure your data is not extracted, however we would strongly advise attending screening appointments in order to reduce the risk of sight loss.

The National Disease Registration Service (NDRS) collects data on patients with cancer, congenital anomalies and rare diseases.

The national data opt-out does not apply to this data - please see the NDRS website to find out more.  To opt out of this data collection, you must contact them directly

The IT system we use for your medical records is EMISWeb.  This is a hosted system, which means your data is held on the EMIS servers in Leeds and is accessed by us via N3, a secure broadband network which is only accessible to the NHS.  If signed EMIS data-sharing agreements are in place, other NHS organisations can also view this patient data over their N3 connection and/or the practice can view your data held on another organisation's EMISWeb system.

Before anyone can view your EMIS shared record they must have a legitimate relationship with you.  Access to shared records is recorded and your consent should be obtained by the person accessing your medical record.

If you do not want your EMIS data to be shared in this way, let the practice or any other organisation using EMIS know – a flag can be set in any of your EMIS records which will stop all sharing from taking place.

The practice is also signed up to share data with local NHS commissioning organisations via EMIS Search & Report.  This involves sharing the results of specific searches set up to identify the numbers of patients meeting the search criteria - patient-identifiable data is not shared.

We currently have agreements to share patient data with:

Sirona is the organisation that now employs Community Nurses amongst other staff. 

A data-sharing agreement is in place so that we can see data recorded for our patients on each other's EMIS system.

One Care is a GP-led organisation that represents practices in Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire.

Data-sharing with the One Care consortium has been in place since 2015.  This allows your medical record to be available to staff from One Care who are treating you and to book patients into Improved Access appointments at another GP practice.

BrisDoc is a GP co-operative that includes the Severnside Integrated Urgent Care service for GP out of hours care.  Data sharing with GP practices was in place using One Care EMIS however since 1/4/20 BrisDoc has had its own EMIS system. In November 2021 our Data Sharing Agreement with them was updated to include the ability for GP practices to view BrisDoc records and future plans for cross-organisational appointment booking by both parties. 

Information in patient records is important for medical research. The practice supports medical research by sending some information from patient records to IQVIA.

IQVIA collates anonymised patient data to assist with research and improve patient and public health. You cannot be identified from the information sent to IQVIA.

IQVIA has been approved by NHS Health Research Authority.

If you do not want anonymised information from your patient record to be used in research, you can opt out via the National Data opt-out.