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Goodbye confidentiality
The government's reverse Midas touch - in which any intervention it makes
into the NHS turns to mud - has again struck.
This time round it has managed to secure virtually unanimous opposition,
plus a threat of being taken to the European Court under the Human Rights
Act, for a measure they have been trying to sneak through parliament for
some months.
This is called Section 60(3) of the Health and Social Care Act. Remember
that number. It should become as notorious, and arouse as much opposition,
as the infamous Section 28.
What Section 60 will do is demolish medical confidentiality. It proposes
that a wide range of patient information - fully attached to names, addresses,
the whole pack drill - can be disclosed by clinicians in any branch of
the NHS to virtually any body that might claim an interest in the information;
Insurance companies, courts, corporate and public researchers.
Patients will be assumed to have given 'implied consent'. That means the
information can be passed on unless you specifically forbid it.
Section 60 also says that doctors are under no obligation to tell you
they are going
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to, or have, passed information on. They can even pass information on, you don't know they have. So how can you stop them? Doctors could be fined if
