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The Government has announced the 1st July start for GP data upload in England will now start on 1st September 2021 – but the Government has not said that you will hear anything from anyone directly about its plans, nor what (if anything) will change. As a result, we cannot guarantee that you will have any more information in August than you do now.

You do still have choices about what’s done with your data, but the Government has still not committed to telling everyone what it plans to do with NHS patients’ data, nor how everyone can exercise their own choices.

If you want to wait and see, you can do that – and you can join our mailing list to know exactly what’s happening when we do.

If you have concerns and wish to opt out now, the process is this:

Choices available to you in the new GP data collection

None of the choices below will affect your medical care, or the data that is available for your care. A longer and different process is required for families with children or other dependents, which we walk you through.

If you live in England and want to stop your GP data leaving your GP practice for purposes other than your direct care, you can do so by filling in and giving or posting the form in step 1 to your GP:

1)  Protect your GP data: fill in and give this ‘Type 1’ form to your GP practice [PDF] [or MS Word] – this form allows you to include details for your children and dependants as well. This is the most urgent step; the deadline to get your form to your GP practice is (a week before) 1st September (was 23 June 2021), according to NHS Digital.

2)  If you want to stop your non-GP data, such as hospital or clinic treatments, being used/sold for purposes other than your direct care (e.g. for “research and planning“) you must use this process:

• If it’s just for yourself,use NHS Digital’s online National Data Opt-out process – this process only works for individuals aged 13 and over.
• If you have children under 13,you need to fill in this form [PDF] and e-mail or post it back to NHS Digital – this form works for both you and your children.
• If you have an adult dependant for whom you have legal responsibility, you must usethis form [PDF] and send it back to NHS Digital on their behalf.

There is no deadline for step 2, the National Data Opt-out (i.e. your non-GP data), but the sooner you do it, the sooner it takes effect. The National Data Opt-out will not stop your GP data being extracted by the new GP data collection.

N.B. If you opted out of care.data in 2014, then you shouldn’t need to do anything now. As most people did both a ‘Type 1’ opt-out and what is now a National Data Opt-out, you can check your NHS Digital opt-out status online at NHS Digital. Your GP opt-out status will probably match the opt-out status shown there; although if you’re not sure, giving a a ‘Type 1’ form to your GP Practice now doesn’t have any risk.

If you don’t have a printer

If you don’t have access to a working printer, you can ask the NHS Digital Contact Centre to post you the forms you need. Their phone number is 0300 303 5678 and they are open Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm (excluding bank holidays), or you can e-mail enquiries@nhsdigital.nhs.uk any time.

If there are TWO adults and ONE child in your house, for example, you would ask them:

Please send forms covering TWO adults and ONE child under 13 to object to the extraction of data from our GP, and a form to implement the National Data Opt-out for us all as well.

Click here to open an e-mail to enquiries@nhsdigital.nhs.uk

Remember to change the numbers IN CAPS to match the number of people in your household when you send the e-mail to NHS Digital.

Or, if you prefer – or if the forms from NHS Digital don’t show up (or they don’t send you what you need, or…) – you can e-mail printer@medConfidential.org with your postal address and we will post you copies of the GP paper forms, for free, no questions asked (tell us if you have children under 13, or the online hospital data service hasn’t worked for you, and so you need the hospital data form as well as the GP data form). If you can afford to make a small donation to support us in offering this service to others, we have a donation page. We will, of course, only use your details to send you the forms you want and we will delete them as soon as we have done that. (medConfidential is registered with the ICO to process personal data in this way.)

As new information or actions that you can take become available, we inform people via our mailing list: