Information for patients or service users
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Yorkshire and Humber Care Record?
At the moment, every health and social care organisation that you use has a different set of patient or service user records for you. These records may duplicate information or one record might hold information about your treatment, care and support that another one doesn’t. To provide the best care to you as a patient or service user it is essential that health and social care professionals have access to the most up-to-date information.
It will be a secure virtual health and social care record. It will pull key information from different health and social care records and store it in one combined record. This enables health and social care professionals to find all the key information for your care in one place.
Why do you need to share my information?
To provide the best treatment, care and support to you as a patient or service user it is essential that health and social care professionals have access to the most up-to-date information. Information is already shared between health and social care organisations by phone and through paper records. Sharing health records allows this sharing process to happen more efficiently, enabling better care for you.
Healthcare organisations across Yorkshire and Humber are working together to further improve health and social care across the region. Health and social care professionals have a duty to share relevant information between them if they are involved in providing you with care.
Types of information that may be shared include:
- Address & telephone numbers
- Care plans outpatient appointments, inpatient stays & clinical contacts
- Referrals, clinic letters & discharge information
- Community treatment orders
- Contact details of care professionals
- Care Plans, including end-of-life care preferences.
How do I know my records are kept secure?
By law, everyone working in, or on behalf of, the NHS and social care must follow strict information governance rules designed to respect your privacy and keep all information about you safe. Information is held on secure, encrypted systems which keeps a record of everyone who has accessed a patient record, the time and date when they accessed it and the information they were viewing. The laws on data protection are clear and we take them very seriously. We regularly check to make sure that only people who need to see your patient record are viewing it.
Can anybody see my records?
Your medical records will still be confidential. They will only be looked at by people who are directly involved in your care. Your information isn’t shared with anyone who doesn’t need it to provide treatment, care and support to you.
Your details will be kept safe and won’t be made public, passed on to a third party who is not directly involved in your care, used for advertising or sold.
Accessing your own health and care records?
Patients have the right under Section 7 of the Data Protection Act (1998) to request access to any information that an organisation holds about them. Each individual organisation that contributes information to your Yorkshire & Humber Care Record has a responsibility to handle these “Subject Access Requests”.
Should you wish to access your records this way, contact the organisation who holds the part of the record you are interested in directly, e.g. your GP, hospital, mental health trust or social care team.
Can I object to my records being shared?
Yes. You have the right to object to your health and care records being shared. However, if staff require access to the information shared on our Yorkshire & Humber Care Record to provide safe individual care they are legally allowed access.
For further information, contact the Access to Health Records team at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust:
T: 0113 20 65824
Access to Health Records Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust St James University Hospital Lincoln Wing / Chancellor Wing Link Corridor Becket Street Leeds LS9 7TF
What do I do if I would like to make a complaint about improper use?
Please contact the care provider alleged of improper use directly to register a complaint.