Connecting Your Care: Improving how we use your information
What do we mean by “Connecting Your Care”?
We are working with the South West London Health and Care Partnership to improve how your care is connected across the region. As part of the Connecting Your Care programme, healthcare professionals will soon be able to securely access your records from other NHS services when needed. This will help make your visits to GPs or hospitals quicker and more efficient.
Currently, each care organisation uses different systems to manage your records, and there is no standard way to share this information electronically when it’s needed by doctors or nurses.
Connecting Your Care will change this by allowing those involved in your treatment—such as GPs, hospital doctors, and nurses—to view important information about you through a secure system. This will support better, safer, and more informed decisions about your care.
In the future, we also plan to work with other health and social care providers to share a more detailed care record. This will include information from community NHS services, mental health services, and social care, ensuring that everyone involved in your care has the information they need to support your treatment effectively.
Do I have a choice?
If you are happy for your information to be shared in this way, then you don’t need to do anything. The Connecting your Care system will be phased in over the next few months.
If you do not want to share any of your health and care records, you will need to contact the Data Protection Officer at the organisation(s) that holds the record concerned and advise them that you “object” to sharing your information to Connecting your Care. Details of how to contact the Data Protection Officer for each organisation will be in the Privacy Notice on their website. Each organisation you submit an “objection” to will review your request and respond to you directly.
If you have records in more than one organisation you will need to contact each organisation separately.
Want to find out more?
To find out more, you can speak to your GP practice staff directly or contact South West London Health and Care Partnership on:
Email: connectingyourcare@swlondon.nhs.uk
Phone: 0203 668 3100
Post: Freepost SWL Connecting Your Care