The non-profit Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR)
claims in a statement that the creation of such a database is
unecessary, since a database containing patients' personal
information, along with records of payments made for their hospital
treatment, already exists.
There are also other databases, the FIPR says, available to
ministers and civil servants, which contain enough information to
identify the "vast majority" of patients.
According to the FIPR, the NHS "should instead concentrate on
preventing existing abuse." The group cites an anti-fraud pilot
scheme in one health authority that exposed 30 unauthorised
information requests per week.
"This suggests", the FIPR considers, "that over 200,000 attempts
are made every year to get health information on patients, by
investigators who call up pretending to be doctors or
administrators."
The group claims that most of these attempts currently
succeed.
The group accuses NHS managers of shelving the scheme launched
by the British Medical Association in 1996 which required that
telephone requests for patient information should be logged,
approved and authenticated.
This scheme would have prevented unauthorised individuals from
gaining access to patients' data, the FIPR says.
The FIPR's statement concludes:
"Patients entrust some of their most
sensitive personal information to their doctors. NHS managers
should not be trying to undermine that trust by spreading
identifiable patient data around the health service bureaucracy and
the civil service.
"The NHS must modernise their systems to
protect rather than undermine patients' privacy. Otherwise they
risk the trust between patient and doctor that is vital for
effective healthcare."
The plans for centralising its resources are part of a £3
billion government programme to modernise the NHS IT systems. The
NHS authorities have claimed that a centralised database would make
cross-checking of patient's information and the detection of fraud
easier.
