NHS HAVE SOLD 47MILLION HOSPITAL IN-PATIENTS DATA TO INSURANCE COMPANY.

If you have spent time in hospital in the last ten years then your data will undoubtabley be in the hands of The Staple Inn Actuarial Society.          Report says data covering in-patient stays between 1997 and 2010 were used to track patients' medical histories. Patients have been identified by their date of birth and their postcode  according to the Daily Telegraph. and the data used by the insurance body to work out premiums. when they combined the data alongside credit ratings it resulted in higher premiums for most people under the age of 50.                                                                                                                                                     The newly formed Health & Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC), which collects national health and social care data, said that the records referred to by the Staple Inn Actuarial Society  had been provided by a predecessor body, the NHS Information Centre. This comes less than a week after the NHS had to postpone the roll out of the GPs and hospital data sharing scheme amidst worries of data protection for individuals.The HSCIC insisted that the records were not used to analyse individual insurance premiums but to analyse general variances in critical illness.                                                                                                                                   This is what the Association of Medical Research Charities chief executive Sharmila Nebhrajani had to say about data sharing on the 18th of february 2014, she said " any sharing of data must be done with care, competence and consent" " care that respects the sensitivity of the data, competence to ensure that information is held securely and most importantly with the informed consent of the public.                                                                                                                                                                                         This has obviously been overlooked by the NSCICs predecessor body, the NHS Information Centre. So who is to be held accountable for the selling off of peoples sensitive data and what assurances can the government give that the data will not be further sold on ? I suspect that this government does not have the answers.                                                                                                                                            When the NHS put their massive data share scheme on hold for six months who had the knowledge that this was happening and why were we not informed?                           privacy experts warn there will be no way for the public to work out who has their medical records or to what use their data will be put.

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NHS ENGLAND TO SELL OFF YOUR DATA.

An electronic medical record example (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

                                                           NHS ENGLAND THE COMPANY THAT EFFECTIVELY RUNS ALL OF THE HEALTH SEVICES IN ENGLAND ARE IN THE PROCESS OF UP LOADING PEOPLES HEALTH RECORDS WITH THE INTENTION OF SELLING IT TO PRIVATE COMPANYS OR INDIVIDUALS THAT DO RESEARCH INTO ILLNESSES OR TREATMENTS THAT MAY BE OF BENEFIT IN THE FUTURE.                                                                                                          
The project is being driven by NHS England, the new super quango, after Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt made it clear he wanted a data revolution in the Health Service.
Mr Hunt argues that sharing GP records with universities and private companies will  provide a valuable tool for medical research, monitoring flu outbreaks and screening for common diseases. The estimated charge for a persons medical records will be set at £1
The records – held for every person registered with a GP – will contain details of medical conditions, as well as ‘identifiable’ information including a patient’s NHS number, postcode and date of birth.                                                                                         GPs are NOT repeat NOT required to inform patients of this happening and until recently patients had no right to object to their files being used in this way but now they can opt out of the sharing of data by informing their GPs. (Maybe the process should have been to "opt in" rather than out)                                                                      Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said: ‘The more people who have access to sensitive data, the greater the risk that it will not be protected properly. We’ve seen that on umpteen occasions in the past.
‘And when there’s a financial element involved, it introduces all sorts of incentives that are not necessarily about protecting privacy.’                                                                   Phil Booth, of campaign group medConfidential, said: ‘They are presenting this as some anodyne thing that’s only going to be used for health research. But this is a massive re-engineering of how everybody’s medical records are going to be used. It is an unprecedented threat to our medical confidentiality.’                                                    The prime minister said it was "simply a waste to have a health service like the NHS and not to use (sell) the medical data it generated ".  "Let me be clear" ( oh those words,let me be clear or to the best of my knowledge) " this does not threaten privacy, it does'nt mean anyone can look at your health records, but it does mean using anonymous data ( joke surely) to make new medical breakthroughs". " The end result will be that every willing patient is a research patient ( guinea pig ) and every time you use the NHS you are playing a part in the fight against disease at home and around the world"                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Just for the record mr prime minister you can count me out.                                     

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MIGRANTS TO BE CHARGED FOR NHS EMERGENCY SERVICES

English: NHS logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

             Ministers keen to clamp down on Medical tourism.   Migrants and overseas visitors are to face new charges for some NHS services in England, ministers say.                                                                                                                                                        Fees included will be extended prescription charges, higher charges for optical and dental treatment and the introduction of charges for some emergency treatment,
Health Minister Lord Howe said: "Having a universal health service free at the point of use rightly makes us the envy of the world, but we must make sure the system is fair to the hardworking British taxpayers who fund it.
"We know that we need to make changes across the NHS to better identify and charge visitors and migrants. Introducing charging at primary care is the first step to achieving this.

"We are already looking at taking action and next year we will set out our detailed plans to clamp down on the abuse of our NHS."                                                                                                                         
 WHO GETS WHAT.    
  Free NHS care is offered to anyone living in the UK who has temporary or permanent permission to do so.
   Asylum seekers, non-European Economic Area nationals who do not have permission to live in the UK, British expats, and visitors usually have to pay for treatment.                                      
 The UK has reciprocal agreements with most European nations and 28 other countries, and under these visitors are given free NHS care.
 The NHS should claim these costs back from the relevant governments - but research suggests just £73m a year is recouped out of more than £460m at present

However
Medical tourism is a lucrative source of income for the NHS, according to a major new study that contradicts many of the assumptions behind the government's announcement that it will clamp down on foreigners abusing the health service.
Eighteen hospitals – those deemed most likely to be making money from overseas patients – earned £42m in 2010, according to researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and York University. Medical tourists spent an estimated £219m on hotels, restaurants, shopping and transport in the UK.   the lead author of the new study, Johanna Hanefeld, from the faculty of public health and policy at the LSHTM, said the government-commissioned research published on Tuesday was "much more across the government immigration agenda than anything to do with health"       
 Their work, published in the open access journal Public Library of Science (PLoS) One, looks at incoming and outgoing medical tourists. Those flying in to the UK include expat Britons living in countries such as Spain which have tightened up their own rules on access to healthcare, they say.
Some NHS hospitals earn substantial sums of money from medical tourists and others could join them in doing so, say Hanefeld and colleagues
 This post contains excerpts from http://bbc.in/19D1lPN  and http://bit.ly/19D1p24

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