Your information and how we use it

National Health Service North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board and your general practitioner (GP) use information about patients to give better care and improve services.

Your data helps:

  • Plan health and care services for your local area
  • Support your general practitioner (GP) in giving you more personal care

This process is called risk stratification.

What is risk stratification?
Risk stratification looks at patient information to spot who might need extra help or plan services for the community. In our area, it is used in two ways:

  1. Finding people who may need support (case finding).
  2. Planning National Health Services (commissioning).

This involves looking at things like age, gender, health conditions, and hospital visits. National Health Service England collects this information from National Health Service hospitals and community care services and links it with data from general practitioner (GP) practices to understand health needs better.

Can I choose not to share my data?
Yes, you can opt out. But this might mean your general practitioner (GP) can’t provide the same level of proactive care for you.

General practitioners (GP) use a special computer programme to find people who might need extra help with their health. This can help stop unexpected hospital trips or help prevent other illnesses. Only your general practitioner (GP) practice can see your personal information.

How it works
Your general practitioner's (GP) computer checks for patients who might be at higher risk of health problems.

Regular checks
These checks happen regularly and are done by the computer without anyone looking at your information. The computer makes a report, and the general practitioner (GP) team looks at it together. If they think your care needs to change, they might contact you.

To plan and commission health services to meet the needs of our population, information from different sources is used to see what it tells us about different trends in health. This information is anonymous and cannot identify an individual.

There is Section 251 approval from the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, through the Confidentiality Advisory Group of the Health Research Authority, which means your general practitioner (GP) can process your data in line with having specific technical and security measures in place.

If you are happy for your data to be used in this way, you don’t need to do anything.

However, if you don’t want your data included, you can choose to opt out by contacting your general practitioner (GP) practice directly. Your records will be updated to make sure your information is not included.

Patient data is used to provide personalised care and improve services. This might include:

  • Age
  • Gender
  • Medication/Treatments
  • Diagnoses
  • Long-term condition(s)
  • Hospital attendance (out-patient)
  • Admissions

Patients have been asked their views about how the local National Health Service uses data to personalise and improve health services.

The survey is now closed, but if you would like to give any comments, you can email nencicb.involve@nhs.net