Patients will not be warned before medical records go online after vital letters lost

By Heidi Blake 730AM GMT twelve March 2010

Around 9 million patients are due to embrace letters this month asking either they instruct to stop their healing annals being eliminated onto the �11 million system, but officials pronounced the perfect scale of the plan has done errors inevitable.

Patients should be told twelve weeks prior to their annals go live, but the NHS certified that people sparse opposite 3 counties in the North East have not been sensitive since their trusted letters were sent to the wrong addresses.

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The Summary Care Records system, that will in the future hold the healing sum of some-more than 50 million patients, has been stubborn by fears that the in isolation report it stores will never be protected from hackers and interpretation losses.

Deepa Shah of NHS Connecting for Health, that manages the database, pronounced "Its really formidable not to have mistakes when you are mailing 9 million people. Its a contrition that a handful of letters have left missing, but it would be really formidable for us to guard ever singular one."

Patients in Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk have perceived letters addressed to the wrong authority in the same pouch as their own letter.

NHS Connecting for Health claimed the blunder was cramped to the North East, but inside sources pronounced letters had additionally left blank opposite Trafford in the North West.

The border of the error, that occurred when staff began seasoned mixture envelopes manually after machine pennyless down, is unknown, but twenty-five cases of transcribe letters have already been reported.

Officials at the Central Office for Information, that manages Government mail-outs, pronounced they would surprise patients whose letters had been sent to the wrong residence of the mistake.

But they certified that nothing of at smallest twenty-five cases detected by The Daily had been reported but delay to them, raising fears that most some-more letters competence have left erroneous but officials realising.

Lateral Group, the in isolation association engaged by the Central Office for Information to lift out the mail-out, did not reply to questions about the array of letters that had been lost. A mouthpiece for the NHS pronounced the association had taken the blunder "very seriously".

At benefaction 1.29 million people have had their sum placed on the complement and a serve 8.9 million annals are due to be combined by June. By the finish of subsequent year, the NHS hopes to have some-more than 50 million uploaded.

The complement is combined to couple about 30,000 GPs to 300 hospitals, on condition that entrance to an online appointments complement and electronic prescriptions.

The Government says patients would be means to entrance their own annals online and will be asked prior to health caring staff perspective their information.

But The Dailydisclosed on Wednesday that the British Medical Association had combined to ministers to give notice that annals are being placed on the database but patients believe or consent.

The authority of the Association called for the plan to be dangling among claims that the Government is rushing it by prior to the Conservatives have a possibility to terminate it if they win the General Election.

Hamish Meldrum wrote "The breakneck speed with that this programme is being implemented is of outrageous concern.

"Patients right to opt out is crucial, and it is intensely shocking that annals are assumingly being combined but them being wakeful of it."

He warned that people were not reception their letters since they were being sent to the wrong addresses and most patients who have perceived them are uncertain of what they mean.

Some patients have additionally complained of being done to answer a array of personal questions prior to being authorised to opt out of carrying their trusted annals placed on the database.

Staff on the Summary Care Records helpline are told to ask a person"s name, address, date of birth, racial organisation and either they work for the NHS prior to similar to send them an opt-out form.

Chris Mannering, a 57-year-old serving woman from Sussex, pronounced "It"s intimidating when you"re told that all you have to do is ring the array and ask for a form, and in actuality you are interrogated. It done me really cross."

Dr Katherine Murphy, executive of the Patients" Association, pronounced "There is a genuine risk that an beginning that will good patients is going to spin in to the common finish mess. Many patients are righteously endangered about their confidentiality and agree and if there is even the smallest sense that this is being pushed by it will beget a feeling of mistrust.

"People who competence differently have consented could finish up opting out that would be the last thing everyone wants."

A mouthpiece for the Central Office for Information pronounced "As shortly as we became wakeful [of the mistake] the executive acted soon to put in place one more peculiarity checks to guarantee opposite a repeat of the issue. We sojourn committed to studious confidentiality and the internal NHS will write to those influenced to apologize and yield reassurance."

She combined that the letters do not themselves enclose any trusted healing information, nonetheless they do enclose names, addresses and sum of the GP surgeries attended by the people concerned.