There are various components to NHS Care Records:

• Personal Demographic Service comprises of your name, address, date of birth, NHS number and GP details. These details will be available to everyone in the NHS unless you are stop-noted and your details are hidden. Even high street pharmacists will be able to access these details unles they are stop-noted. You may request yours to be stop-noted or hidden if you are a victim of domestic violence or in a witness protection program, for example.
• Summary Care Record this includes all your major illnesses, allergies, prescriptions, etc. Unless you have elected not to have these clinical details uploaded to the national database you will have presumed to have consented to them being on the database on the basis of your “implicit consent”. Once again these clinical details will be available nationally. High Street Pharmacists are arguing they should have access to this and be able to amend it.
• NHS Care Records include all your very detailed medical records this means all your GP consultations and all your hospital consultations. In fact everything you tell your GP or Consultant in confidence. These records will stored around the country in regional shared hosting centres. Patients are completely unable to opt out of having their detailed NHS Care Records stored at these shared hosting centres. Primary Care Trusts and Strategic Health Authorites all share these regional hosting centres and records.
• Sealed Envelopes are suppose to be under development so that patients can restrict access to their most sensitive medical records for example, mental health, terminations. Even if you place your most sensitive details in these sealed envelopes they will still be stored at the regional shared hosting centres. The seal can be broken by a doctor/NHS employee in an emergency. As yet sealed envelopes have not been developed and new NHS Care Records will go live without them. So your detailed medical records will be accessible to everyone in your regional area.
• Hosting Centres are region-based. Hence all your detailed and sensitive medical records will be available at a regional level to anyone in the NHS with a perceived need to know. Someone in a neghbouring GP surgery or hospital will be able to access them.
• Secondary Uses Service: every time you attend a hospital appointment your post code, date of birth, GP details, consultant details, outpatient clinic, inpatient admission, procedure and whether you are be followed up is all coded (this can very easily be deciphered) and sent by the hospital to BT. Prior to BT taking over this function they where sent to a private company in Warwick. This has been going for a number of years. All these details will be stored at the regional hosting centre and can accessed by your local Primary Care Trust, Strategic Health Authority, the Department of Health, medical researchers and even ‘Dr Foster’ are allowed access to all this personal and clinical information. [See 'My Story' for more information]