NHS England has instructed the Health and Social Care Information Centre to collect information from GP practices for purposes other than direct care. As a first step they will be working with a number of GP practices (between 100 – 500). These Pathfinder GP practices will test, evaluate and refine all aspects of the data collection process ahead of national roll out.

Where information about a patient is recorded on a General Practice electronic patient record within the previous four months, we will collect the patient NHS number, date of birth, gender, and postcode. This information will go through an automated process that will enable us to link the information from GP records with information from hospitals, and will then be removed to a separate, secure place.

You can read about the Care.data initiative here. If you wish to opt out, please contact us so that we can update your records.