[Mr. Mike Weir in the Chair] — Electronic Patient Record

Part of the debate – in Westminster Hall at 4:50 pm on 21 February 2008.

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Photo of Ben Bradshaw Ben Bradshaw Minister of State (Regional Affairs) (South West), The Minister of State, Department of Health 4:50, 21 February 2008

No, we do not keep records on such individual cases. If we were required to be informed of every single small piece of disciplinary activity that was taken in the whole of the health service or minor breaches of data security, it would not only overwhelm the Department but the health service itself. However, there is a requirement on the health service locally to inform strategic health authorities of serious breaches of data security. Indeed, that is how a number of breaches recently came to light—most of them had already been in the public domain for some time, but they were only publicised more widely because of the recent interest in this subject following the data issues with Revenue and Customs.

Moving on to the issues raised by Dr. Taylor, he wanted more detail about how the IT roll-out was going. I can tell him that five out of the six primary care trusts involved have started informing the public. They are Bolton, Bury, Dorset, South Birmingham and Bradford and Airedale. As of 3 February, 26 GP practices had gone live with the summary care record, and more than 153,000 patients' clinical records had been updated to form summary care records. A public information programme is in place in all the early adopter sites to inform people about the changes and the decisions that they may make regarding their records. As I have already said, public reaction has been very favourable, with only 0.64 per cent. of patients asked choosing to exercise their right to opt out.

The hon. Member for Wyre Forest asked about Bolton PCT in particular. It has issued 270,000 letters to patients, and 0.9 per cent. of the patients who were asked opted out of having their summary care record uploaded. Some 94,000 records have been created on the NHS national care records spine. Three or four unscheduled care settings can view the summary care records. Two of them are the accident and emergency department and the walk-in centre, and there is also the GP out-of-hours service, so good progress has been made there.