A Partial Victory

The NHS database rolls forward – behind time, over budget, but like Frankenstein’s monster awakens slowly. Some patients (like Mrs Longrider and I) have expressed privacy concerns and expressed a desire not to be included on this behemoth. It is, after all our data, is it not? Last month the government rejected such requests. Now, it seems, they may be back pedalling.

The government has bowed to privacy concerns about a new NHS computer system and conceded that patients should be allowed a veto on information about their medical history being passed from their GP to a national database.

Following a Guardian campaign against the compulsory uploading of personal details to the system known as The Spine, Lord Warner, the health minister, will announce a plan that would allow individuals to review and correct their records and withhold them from the database.

This is good news indeed. Evidence that people power can influence even the most autocratic of government departments. However…

Lord Warner said it was not yet possible to guarantee a right of veto. Some doctors were concerned that patients might be putting themselves at risk by refusing access to records that could save their lives in an emergency.

Bollocks! Lord Warner is a pillock of the highest order. How, exactly, have the emergency services managed to save countless lives up until now? How did they manage without a database to tell them what they can glean from the patient, the patient’s relatives and friends, from carrying out tests at the time? For crying out loud! Health care providers are perfectly capable of dealing with an emergency effectively without a database, it’s what they’ve been doing since the invention of medicine. Ah, but, ZANU Labour with its managerial obsession knows better. Frankly, I’ll take my chances with the paramedics rather than allow my details to be uploaded onto a national database and my privacy threatened.

Lord Warner said the government remains firmly committed to the creation of a national database and hopes to persuade the vast majority of patients to consent to their records going on it.

Not me, you won’t.

A public information campaign will be launched shortly, claiming that lives could be saved in emergencies with instant access to information about patients’ allergies, medications and previous treatments.

Bollocks.

The new proposals will not change the government’s plan to upload patients’ names, addresses and dates of birth to the national database. Ministers say the NHS needs a list of who is entitled to free treatment and has legal authority to make this information accessible to authorised medical staff throughout England.

One might almost be inclined to diagnose obsessive compulsive disorder on the part of hmg…

Update: All is not as it seems. See Terri’s comment below. The question is; have you told your GP you want to opt out yet?