Healthcare professionals who misuse the Single Patient Record (SPR) will face serious consequences, minister of state for the Department of Health and Social Care (DH) Karin Smyth has warned.
Discussing the Health Bill in parliament on July 2, Smyth said if “regulated healthcare professionals, such as doctors, nurses and pharmacies” are caught inappropriately accessing records, they can be “reported to their respective professional bodies, which can result in them being struck off in serious cases”.
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Her comments came in response to an amendment suggested by Dr Caroline Johnson, the shadow minister for health and social care, to ensure the security of the SPR.
As part of the amendment, Johnson said there should be measures taken in the bill “to prevent clinicians and other persons involved … from accessing patient information made available through the system otherwise than for the purposes of the care of the patient concerned”.
“Serious offence”
Smyth responded that “inappropriate or unauthorised access to health records” is “a serious offence that can lead to severe penalties, including dismissal, criminal prosecution and financial penalties”.
She referenced the Computer Misuse Act of 1990, which makes it an offence to “use a computer to access information in an unauthorised manner”, such as “as a person accessing information without a legitimate reason”.
The MP also highlighted that inappropriate use of data can be investigated by the Information Commissioner’s Office, which can enforce “monetary penalties, enforcement notices, undertakings, prosecutions and reprimands”.
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She added that the SPR will “operate on a roles-based access control model, similar to other NHS patient record systems” and the system functions in a way that means “access to patient information is restricted to the authorised user only”.
The SPR will also have additional security measures, which include “applying advanced cloud-based audit and oversight capabilities”.
This will enable the NHS security teams to “track and detect access patterns, and to quickly intervene if specific records are accessed by staff who have no clinical relationship with the patient in question”.
It comes after the SPR was formally introduced into the NHS Modernisation Bill, or Health Bill, in May.
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The DH said that the SPR will help healthcare professionals to provide “safer, more coordinated care” and will give patients “clear safeguards, audit trails, and choice over how their data is used”.
And it follows pharmacist MP Sadik Al-Hassan proposing a new NHS-owned patient medication record (PMR) system last month, to “link up patient data across all of primary and secondary care”.
He called the proposed system “Project Bevan”, and said it is required in order to “have a true SPR”.
