Medical details of Wirral patients to be stored on national database

Mar 3 2010 by Lorna Hughes, Heswall News

THE MEDICAL details of everyone in Wirral will soon be stored on a national database.

Letters have been sent out to patients about the Summary Care Record (SCR), a government scheme to allow medics access to patients’ key health records.

Patients will be able to opt out of the Department for Health (DoH) Scheme which will see their records available nationally as well as locally.

The SCR will be available across the country giving medics secure access to patients’ history.

Wirral is one of the first areas to roll out the scheme after it was trialled in other parts of the country.

It comes two years after the scrapping of ‘Wirral keep well’, in which patients’ details were to be sent to Boston, America to build up a profile of the health of Wirral and be used to design a telephone service

Martin McEwan, NHS Wirral director of communications and engagement, said “Every measure has been put in place to ensure the information is stored safely, stays private and can only be viewed or accessed by those authorised to do so.

“The security measures are more stringent than those applied to internet banking.”