Changes to General Practice Data for Planning and Research data collection

Posted on June 3rd, 2021

The NHS needs data about the patients it treats in order to plan and deliver its services and to ensure that care and treatment provided is safe and effective. The General Practice Data for Planning and Research data collection will help the NHS to improve health and care services for everyone by collecting patient data that can be used to do this. For example patient data can help the NHS to:

• monitor the long-term safety and effectiveness of care
• plan how to deliver better health and care services
• prevent the spread of infectious diseases
• identify new treatments and medicines through health research

GP practices already share patient data for these purposes, but this new data collection will be more efficient and effective.
GP Data for Planning and Research Programme: GP data has a crucial role to play in research and planning which can improve public health, but it is important for patients and the public that this data is made available for appropriate purposes in a secure and trusted manner. This programme is a planned replacement for the GP Extraction Service (GPES) currently used to collect data for planning and research from general practices in England.

It is a legal obligation for the practice to comply with the Data Provision Notice ‘DPN’ for this programme as a result of a new direction from the secretary of state for health and social care as part of the Health and Care Act 2012. Once fully established, this new collection will replace multiple other data collections from general practices including the GPES in due course.

It is important to state that this new GPDPR programme is not a new processing of GP data in any way; what it does is to carry out an ongoing processing i.e. extraction of patients’ data by NHS Digital for planning and research purposes via a more efficient means. NHS Digital has set out that, whilst general practice will still retain data controllership over patient records within their practice, once data has been extracted from patient records and shared with NHS Digital, NHS Digital will be the responsible and accountable data controller under the UK GDPR for data access and dissemination for planning and research. Full details on the processing of patients’ data for this programme can be found in the NHS Digital’ privacy notice here: https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/data-collections-and-data-sets/data-collections/general-practice-data-for-planning-and-research/transparency-notice

However, If you do not want your personally identifiable patient data to be shared outside of your GP practice for purposes except your own care, you can register an opt-out with your GP practice by the 23rd August 2021 with the first collection being 1 September 2021. This is known as a Type 1 Opt-out.

You can use this form (click here) to:

• register a Type 1 Opt-out, for yourself or for a dependent (if you are the parent or legal guardian of the patient) (to Opt-out)
• withdraw an existing Type 1 Opt-out, for yourself or a dependent (if you are the parent or legal guardian of the patient) if you have changed your preference (Opt-in)

This decision will not affect individual care and you can change your choice at any time, using this form. This form, once completed, should be sent to your GP practice by email or post.

You may also wish to register a National Data Opt-out which is not done at GP practice level; for this, you must contact NHS Digital – more information about the National Data Opt-out is here: https://www.nhs.uk/your-nhs-data-matters/