Text from surgery asking if I smoke

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So I received a text from NHS-NoReply asking me to reply (?) with SMOKE, EX, or NEVER. As apparently my surgery want to update their records.

They already know my status as I told them fourteen weeks ago. It's not like I haven't been asked for years and years.

AIBU at the question? I haven't replied.

So as not to drip feed:
I'm a social smoker, never in the house or car.
Same surgery has a big black mark for me, for not inviting dd for her first jabs, I realised at 11 weeks she'd had none. But she had had croup. Grr.

rumble, so you're not answering, because you dont feel you "have had any support or help"?. What kind of help were you looking for/expecting, did you ask for it? No idea what I could do to help low BP, it is very hard to manage, so not sure what I could do. I do think GP's have superpowers to solve every problem they have (actually we don't really....).
I think your tit for tat is a bit childish actually.

I think rumble is saying she expects this health care thing to be a partnership, not a matter of her jumping through hoops ticking boxes for her surgery when they don't engage with her over that information.

Personally, until this health record debacle is sorted out I'm not inclined to give my doctor any information that isn't necessary for my immediate care. That's problematic I know. And I know most GPs are unhappy with how the database has been rolled out. But I am not really prepared to put administrative need above my privacy at the moment. I guess it's a mild form of civil disobedience.

I will not be answering any questions, get weighed, have my blood pressure taken, have a smear test or any other form of screening as I believe that I no longer have a confidential "patient/doctor" relationship with my GP, if the surgery is going to upload my medical record to care.data.

If we don't meet our targets this year - which is looking increasingly likely - we will be making staff redundant. Probably a doctor as if the one who has gone off sick with stress resigns we can't afford to replace him. I'll be spending the next month frantically trying to make up the points as our patients are the ones who'll suffer if we have one less Dr.

I would be tempted to respond Yes, but only after sex (20 a day)

Not a single GP I know thinks care.data is a good thing, no idea what makes you think we have a choice. We have notices up everywhere advising people to opt out.

You used to be able to record people as 'declined to answer' or similar and that counted. Have they closed that option off?

It isn't about whether you have a choice macdoodle. It's that the only way, as a patient, to protect yourself from having data shared is to not give the information.

I got a text asking if my now 14 year old had been given his MMR.
Been with the same surgery since his birth and they gave him ALL his vaccinations. Apparently they have no record of it???

If it doesn't obviously help me to give the GP my data, I just don't do it. I don't care about how difficult it is for that struggling doctors (who do quite well, still) to keep body and soul together - it shouldn't make a difference. I'm not responsible for how or why the thing has become so ridiculously badly run, so I don't feel obliged to be part of the mystified and slightly narked masses offering personal data for no obvious reason.

Anyone trying to suggest that there's a moral obligation on the patient's part to reply to these texts from GPs surgeries should sit down with a nice cup of tea and have a go at George Orwell's 1984.

Quite familiar with 1984 thanks...

I'm not suggesting there's any moral obligation. Far from it. You don't need to do anything you're not comfortable with.

For me it's about playing the game. To get the funding we need to provide a barely acceptable service to our patients we need to collect points and points mean funding. If our patients don't cooperate as they're entitled not to do, then we all lose out. As long as people understand that it's a game that we have to play or else we go under.

Surely everyone's answer to this question should be "No" whatever the actual case - otherwise your life insurance and other insurances go through the roof. That's the problem with this kind if data gathering - if it was just benigh info for targeting the correct GP funding at helping people give up smoking or whatever, fair enough. But it's not. When you apply for life insurance (as many people do when they get a mortgage for example) the assessor slick at your medical records and, quite rightly, assess smokers as being massive risks for heart disease, cancer and early death. So make it very expensive to insure them (or refuse to insure them). Quite right if course but how many other judgements will e going on behind the scene that you are unaware of? And may be hitting your pocket. On data that, as this thread has shown, is not even always correct!

I was refused life insurance once because my old GPs surgery told them I was diabetic and not controlling it (no evidence of attendance to diabetic clinic). I am not and never have been (ditto with smoking). my mother is diabetic and hence I was tested for gestational diabetes during pregnancy, always negative. The insurance company made me wait 6 month with no insurance while it was all sorted out.

If I was sure that the data was used for healthcare funding and healthcare statistics only then I would quite happily answer all questions truthfully. But it's not. So I answer everything with "no, never" (true in my case for smoking) which, if everyone does it, makes the data pretty worthless doesn't it?

The changes of opinion on this thread show very clearly that people are perfectly happy to work in partnership with their GP for mutual benefit when they understand what's going on.

But that curt, unexplained, imperious demands are likely to get the finger.

Which isn't really news in healthcare, is it?

Perhaps the surgeries stupid enough to have sent out such rubbish need the reminder that the era of paternalistic medicine is over, and cooperative work is more effective.

It'll be everyone's insurance that's worthless if they just start lying to their insurance companies. Not sure that's a great idea. Paying lower premiums for a policy that doesn't pay out at the end of the day because the insurer found out that you were lying is what I'd call a false economy.

The problem is the manner in which you are asked and the setting in which you are asked and the context in which you are asked.

Why is it only a few places are doing this? And others aren't? This to me suggests that certain GPs are better run than others and have better relationships with their patients so don't need to send impersonal unexplained text messages.

I despite the fact that humans are reduced to tick boxes.

And no we don't have to play the game. If we don't play the game, then the system won't work and if the system doesn't work, then they have to rethink the system and why it isn't working. If you comply then it works. If you don't like it, register that by not complying and perhaps they will realise this isn't the healthcare system we want.

If it's not in your medical records they wouldn't find out. Obviously if you are a heavy smoker that has smoked for 20years then it would be pointless to lie as it would be medically obvious that they were a smoker and at large risk.

But re people really happy to pay double other people's insurance premiums because they smoked for a couple of years at university 20 years ago. Or because their father was a smoker and died of heart disease? Or because their mother is diabetic? Or because the surgery has out of date information saying they are 20st but they lost loads of weight years ago?

If you cant trust the accuracy of the data then it is useless in my opinion.

We have to update smoking status (and ask patients if they want a referral to the "Stop Smoking Clinic" ) The glassy look that comes over peoples eyes..........

The Tick Box we didn't care to fill in was about patients sexuality. Considering most of my patients are 70+ (though there are younger patients) I really don't want to be asking
"So, Mr Frobeshire , I just need to fill this in. Age Catergory 70-79 tick.
Ethnicity ( there's another fecking can of worms "I'm not White British , I'm white English ")
So would you class yourself as Straight, Gay/Lesbian or Bi-Sexual......

Fine don't play the game.

If I don't play the game my business goes under, my patients suffer and I might as well go and work for Virgin Helathcare. Which is presumably what the coalition wants.