FOI appeal on summary records legal status

A GP campaigning against the consent model for the Summary Care Record has taken his battle to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Dr Paul Thornton, a GP in Warwickshire, has lodged a Freedom of Information Act appeal with the Information Commissioner after the Department of Health refused to release its legal advice on the legal status of the electronic health information stored as part of the NHS Care Records Service’s SCR project.

Dr Thornton has also written to Dorset Local Medical Committee where the latest early adopter site for the SCR has just begun. In the letter he claims that GPs have been put in an “invidious position” as the programme in Dorset will use the same consent model that has been used in the other early adopter areas and questioned by the recent independent evaluation by University College London as ineffective.

Dr Thornton told EHI Primary Care: “Before the evaluation you could argue that the information that was sent out to patients was sufficient to achieve implied consent but we now know from UCL evaluation that it doesn’t achieve that objective.”

The evaluation found that in more than 100 interviews conducted with patients a high proportion did not recall having received information about the SCR or HealthSpace despite an extensive public information programme.

Dr Thornton claims that as a result the consent model, under which some health information is uploaded to the Spine on an implied consent model, cannot be regarded as valid.

Dr Thornton’s application to the Information Commissioner relates to legal advice the government obtained when a ministerial review of the SCR proposals was carried out in 2006.

Dr Thornton told the Information Commissioner that publication of the advice was in the public interest in understanding the legal implications for medical confidentiality and outweighed the public interest in maintaining legal privilege in the case.

He told EHI primary Care: “I think that there are good grounds for release of the advice and based on previous jurisdictions made by the Information Tribunal.

However the department could also voluntarily release it as I don’t believe there is any plausible reason for withholding it.”