How to opt out of the NHS care data scheme

At a meeting last night I couldn't find anyone who had received their letter about the sharing of individual's medical data so it is good news that implementation has been delayed for six months.

There are concerns about the security of the system and its possible misuse. This was discussed in the Guardian 18 months ago: LINK

If you decide you want to opt out of the system, which is your right, Fax Your GP Com LINK have set uo an easy facility. This is what they say:

We’re a very small group of volunteers who think it should be very easy for people to opt out of the new NHS care.datacentralised database of medical records.

Unless you opt out now, care.data will soon store the medical records of everyone in England, yours included, in one giant database.

Our confidential health information will then be shared with companies and other public bodies.

Some people we respect think care.data is, on balance, a good thing.
Some people we respect think care.data is, on balance, a bad thing.

What we know for certain is that the NHS hasn’t made it easy for you to exercise your right to opt out. We think this really isn’t wise.

The NHS leaflet explaining care.data says you should ‘let your GP know’ if you want to opt out.
But GP surgeries are busy. If you ring up wanting to opt out they’ll ask you to write to them instead. That’s fair enough – their priority is treating the sick.

It’s 2014. The NHS really should have made it easy to opt out via the web.
So we thought we’d help out.

First, we found the fax numbers for every GP practice (sadly, very few let you email them). After you’ve entered your details, our clever computers automatically fax your letter asking to opt-out of the care.data database straight to your GP practice.

It’s free. It’s secure. And we don’t store any of your personal data once your opt-out fax has been received by your GP. So we won’t email trying to sign you up for other campaigns.

Sadly we can’t make any 100% watertight promises that this site will always work. Your GP’s fax number might be listed incorrectly on the NHS website, for example.

So if you want total reassurance, it might be best to print out an opt out letter and pop it round to your GP yourself.

However, we have done this sort of thing before, and so know it works well. Back in 1999/2000 some of us built FaxYourMP.com, to make it easy for people to contact their MP, since in those days most MPs didn’t publish their email addresses. A bit like GPs, today, in fact.

We didn’t expect to have to resurrect a similar service nearly 15 years later. Frankly, we shouldn’t have had to, but needs must.

— Stef Magdalinski and friends.

The Keep Our NHS Public leaflet downloadable below contains an opt-out letter you can take to your GP: