Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Don't Talk to Your Doctor; It's Bad for You

Here's the Guardian on the NHS Database:

"The information commissioner, Richard Thomas, warned this year that private investigators were already raiding government and company databases, because the penalties are so weak. Investigations by his staff and police had uncovered "evidence of a pervasive and widespread 'industry' devoted to the illegal buying and selling of such information".

"Mr Thomas said he had identified 305 journalists buying unlawful personal information about celebrities, lottery winners and others. A private detective hired by a potentially abusive husband to track down his wife had posed as a health official. He had "obtained details of the woman's whereabouts by phoning her parents' medical centre and requesting their number to check a prescription". Government databases raided on behalf of insurance firms and private industry, often with the help of staff, have included the Police National Computer, the DVLA's vehicle computer, and those at the Department for Work and Pensions


UPDATE: Here's who to complain to. If enough of us do it, it could put a spanner in the works.


HT: ARCH

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can't we just cancel our NHS records altogether? Are British people forced by law to be registered with a GP and use the NHS whether they like it or not?

Anonymous said...

NHS Medical Data Base - Government plans to put medical records on a national electronic data base. My personal view is that psychiatric files should inform the appropriate agencies if a person was genuinely potentially dangerous (to themselves or others) or if the person was in danger from others. Documentation should also inform the appropriate agencies as to the person’s level of vulnerability and need of assistance. I have very great concerns about the proposed new data base. I have seen huge amounts of paperwork concerning myself, most of it is inaccurate, misleading and open to interpretation. .

Complaints - One of the main problems service users have when complaining about mental health authorities is that the authorities decide the rules of their complaints procedure. In my experience there is also a tendency to penalize the complainer and be-little the complaint as being part of a psychiatric dysfunction. This site will campaign for greater accountability from psychiatric services. Their exists no independent authoriety, to protect the rights of mental health service users. No board of vistors, no independent complaints commision etc. This is clearly wrong and un-democratic, it is very easy to dis-couredge a mentally ill person from complaining. www.ticketytock.org