APPENDIX 24
Memorandum submitted by the General Medical
Council
GUIDANCE ON
CONFIDENTIALITY
At the May 2001 Council meeting we agreed not
only to revise our guidance Confidentiality: Protecting and
Providing Information, but also to broaden the scope of the
November 2000 statement on disclosures to cancer registries. I
enclose a copy of the statement issued following that meeting
(see Annex). The Committee will wish to note that it continues
the assurance that "the practical difficulties which doctors
face in seeking consent to disclosures ahead of the implementation
of new systems will be taken into account if complaints about
disclosures are made to the GMC".
The Council's decision was reported in our news
letter GMC News in June 2001, and the 2001 statement is
on our website, and on the DH Information Policy Unit website.
We have also written to the UKACR, the PHLS and others to inform
them of our position and proposals for the future.
The revised booklet Confidentiality: Protecting
and Providing Information will describe the principles of
confidentiality which should underpin all doctors' practice in
handling personal information about patients. Advice on how the
principles apply in particular circumstances will be published
as a separate leaflet, and on our website. This will enable us
to provide advice on specific problems, such as disclosures to
cancer registries, taking into account, and keeping up to date
with, the statute and common law requirements in England and Wales,
in Scotland and Northern Ireland, and in some cases the practical
difficulties of seeking, recording or acting on patients' wishes.
We plan to publish the new guidance as soon as possible after
the first regulations under the Health and Social Care Act 2001
are passed.
Isabel Nisbet
Director of Policy
1 February 2002
Annex
GMC GUIDANCE CONFIDENTIALITY:
PROTECTING AND
PROVIDING INFORMATION
1. We fully support the work of cancer registries
and of other research, epidemiology and surveillance, which is
vital in protecting and enhancing the public health. We also believe
that patients' privacy and autonomy should generally be respected,
and that systems for seeking consent, and for protecting privacy,
through anonymisation or similar measures, should be adopted whenever
that it is practicable. In some cases the current administrative
and computer systems for disclosing or accessing identifiable
data about patients for epidemiology and research prevent doctors
from following our guidance on confidentiality published in September
2000.
2. We have accepted assurances from the
UK Health Department that systems for protecting patient confidentiality
will be implemented as soon as practicable. In the light of those
assurances, we have agreed that the practical difficulties which
doctors face in seeking consent to disclosures ahead of the implementation
of new systems will be taken into account if complaints about
disclosures are made to the GMC.
3. We are revising our guidance Confidentiality:
Protecting and Providing Information to reflect the new legal
position in England and Wales, when Regulations are passed under
the Health and Social Care Act 2001. We propose to reissue our
guidance to coincide with the implementation of the first Regulations.
We will also be publishing additional advice and guidance in a
booklet of Frequently Asked Questions, which we will up-date
regularly as Regulations under the Act are passed or withdrawn,
and to reflect other topical issues.
Isabel Nisbet
Director of Policy
1 February 2002
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