Pharmacy organisations have hit back against a ‘misleading’ article in the national press that claimed pharmacy access to the SCR would breach patient privacy.

The PSNC, the RPS and Pharmacy Voice, together with NHS England, have spoken out in defence of pharmacy access to the NHS summary care record (SCR), following media claims that it could jeopardise patient confidentiality.

An article entitled ‘Tesco can see your medical records’, published on August 10 in The Telegraph, asserted that high street pharmacies, including Tesco, Boots and Superdrug, would be able to view patient medical information on the SCR and use it to target patients with product promotions.

Health editor Laura Donnelly highlighted the concerns of privacy campaign group medConfidential that “the scheme could leave the public exposed to heavy marketing tactics from firms with inside information about their health” or that shop loyalty cards could be linked with personal medical information.

Unfounded

In a joint letter to the newspaper, PSNC, the RPS and Pharmacy Voice answered the unfounded allegations and highlighted the safeguards that will prevent unauthorised access to the SCR by commercial companies. The letter, a small extract of which was published in The Telegraph, outlined the fact that access to patient records will be restricted to registered pharmacists and pharmacy technicians using a secure NHS smartcard and PIN.

Furthermore, pharmacists must obtain each patient’s explicit consent before viewing their record, and each point of SCR access will be monitored by the NHS and traceable back to the individual. The article also inaccurately stated that the SCR holds personal information such as diagnoses and patient preferences when in fact it is restricted to medicines prescribed, patient allergies and known adverse reactions to medicines, the letter added.

To provide further reassurance of the security of the scheme, the three pharmacy organisations emphasised the fact that “pharmacists are subject to the same degree of regulation as doctors and nurses and any breach of confidentiality would be subject to regulatory investigation” and pointed out that “data protection law forbids any use of personal patient data beyond individual patient care”.

In a separate statement, NHS England and the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) stressed that pharmacists accessing the SCR in a pharmacy within a supermarket would be subject to the same controls as those in other settings and that patient information would not be available to supermarkets for marketing purposes.

SCR access – safeguards in place

Most trusted

Pharmacy access to the SCR will be rolled out across England following a positive evaluation of a pilot project in 140 community pharmacies in Somerset, Northampton, North Derbyshire, Sheffield and West Yorkshire in 2014. In 18 per cent of cases where the record was accessed, the risk of a prescribing error was avoided, while in 92 per cent of cases the pharmacist had enough information to treat the patient and avoid referring them to their GP surgery or A&E.

According to NHS England, there is much evidence that the public is supportive of pharmacy access to summary care records. A broad range of stakeholders have endorsed the scheme, including the Patients’ Association, Parkinsons UK, Age UK, National Voices, Diabetes UK and Asthma UK, while local patient groups were consulted during the proof of concept and pilot stages.

In addition, a YouGov poll in August 2014 revealed that 85 per cent of the British public want every healthcare professional treating them to have secure electronic access to key data from their GP record.

“Community pharmacists are regularly identified as the most trusted healthcare professionals and they are already well informed about patients’ medicines and in some cases the conditions they are treating,” said Alastair Buxton, PSNC director of NHS Services. “This sensitive information is already handled properly and confidentially in pharmacies and similar practices will be adopted to secure the data in the summary care record.”

The letter ended by arguing that all healthcare professionals would need to work better together to ensure that patients receive “the right care, at the right time, in the right place” and that “pharmacists as experts in medicines need the right information to provide better care to patients.” PSNC has developed a briefing to help pharmacy teams to respond to any concerns raised by the public, available at the PSNC website.

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