Steve Nowottny reports:
The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail this morning cover the charge from privacy campaigners Big Brother Watch that Connecting for Health may be ‘scaring’ patients into agreeing to have a Summary Care Record.
The lobby group accused Connecting for Health of overstating the risk to patients if they opt out of the system, after a Department of Health spokesman apparently contradicted dire warnings placed on the Connecting for Health website.
On the website, patients are warned that if they opt out of the Summary Care Record they could suffer ‘adverse consequences’ including a ‘delay or missed opportunity for correct treatment’, claiming that ‘the NHS has significant problems now with lost records and test results and treatment and prescribing errors’. [See optout.pdf file on that site — Dissent]
But a DH spokesperson told the Daily Mail that there was no major problem under the current system – ‘prompting speculation that the Government was making the claim to frighten patients into joining the database.’
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