AiBu to assume HV cannot access my medical records?

[Lov3rlybaby]

I am having my 6 week postnatal check up with the GP next week and want to discuss details about healing/my episiotomy.
I don't want my DD's health visitor to have access to the notes my GP and I discuss as I know one of the health visiting team staff personally.
AiBu to think that as the health visiting team are not employed under the GP surgery, they cannot access my medical notes?
Yabu - they can access your dd and your medical notes regardless of whether they work for the surgery
Yanbu - your medical records are private between you and your GP surgery.

BMA guidance here...

www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/ethics/confidentiality-and-health-records/sharing-local-electronic-patient-records-for-direct-patient-care

Unless you raise red flags or have MH issues your HV usually doesn’t care about you enough to learn your name. I had PNA and it had been flagged already by my mw and so the HV had full access to my birth and medical history.

YABU. Unless sharing consent is set to 'no' then she can see all of your records, assuming they're on the same medical system which is fairly likely, so you'll need to speak to admin at your GP surgery to check this.

(This is how it is in my area). If I go onto a patients records and they were seen at another surgery 400 miles away whilst on holiday I can still read the full consultation if sharing consent is set to share.

You and your dd are under the care of the hv team so will have access to your records, though this depends on both using the same system and the gp having shared the records.

Noone you know personally should access your records. You can call hv team and highlight your relationship if you want to make doubly sure, it is possible to block individuals from having access if you're that worried.

Where I work (London) GP notes are not on the same system as other health professionals. If you change address with the GP, our system tells us that (and vice versa) but we can't see anything else. I'm not a HV but on the same system (Health Care Professional).

Hello OP, I used to be a HV and one of the things we spoke to women about was sharing of records. The GP should be able to see you and wrote up your appointment without sharing it with the HV team.
I know sometimes GPs would share information with me and sometimes it was kept confidential between them and the patient.

Tbh unless a GP specifically shared information with me I didn’t look. The info they might share with me would be stuff like “I think this patient is at risk of PND”. Even then they would only share it with the consent of the person they had seen.

So ask your GP to keep the info confidential between you and them. There should be no issue with that at all.

Mine knows details about my rape and subsequent ptsd so I think they must have access.

I’m not even sure what the purpose of a HV is I usually tell them not to come. Do you need to see the HV?

In my area the HV teams are employed by the council not healthcare and, as a result, GP’s notes are not accessible by them and they cannot do healthcare referrals because it’s not part of their system - however, council tax, waste management, housing etc can all access the HV notes on the councils system which is why I refused consent for the HVs to process my information or that of my twins before I removed their consent to even be involved with my family after they proved themselves to be both useless and unreliable.

I think it may depend where you live and your local trust. If you call up your GP surgery they should be able to tell you.

In our area we have shared care so the hospital, health visiting team and GP surgery can all access the same information. I'd say it's been like that for about the last 3 years.

In other areas it might have been like that for longer or not be like that at all yet. Best to just ring and check.

If she can see it she is bound to confidentiality.

Thank you all for your responses they are really helpful!
@rememberallball I think my daughter's letter from the team says council... I didn't realise that the council system might have access! How did you refuse consent with the HV team - just write to them?

Your ‘friend’ would also get into a lot of trouble if she could access your records and did so. I could look at my friends medical stuff on our system at work but there are safeguards to stop this or catch you and it’s serious if you get caught.
However i am not in the slightest bit interested in anyone’s post natal healing and I’m sure except for in a professional capacity for her caseload mums neither is she? Not sure why you think she’d risk her career to look up your appointment details or be interested enough to? Can’t be very good friends imo

I'm pretty sure that where I live they can access GP notes.

I was once working with a family where there was a potential safeguarding issue and a lot of HV involvement, iirc it was actually the HV that referred them to our service.

The HV told me a lot health and MH stuff about the parents, and I don't think they'd have told her themselves, as they didn't have a good relationship with her and were pretty unco-operative with her.

I was a bit shocked to find out that the community nurses based at a village surgery were able to access the medical records of patients in the CCG area. I only found out because my vile ex-SIL looked up the records of a young women who was very friendly to her husband, so she looked up her records and told the world and his wife about her issues.

I'd have reported her if it wasn't for the fact that my abusive ex would have given me hell for grassing up his sister (we were together when all this happened).

@Lov3rlybaby, yes I emailed the general council enquiry address with instructions that I withdrew my consent for their HV team to process or access my data held by the council and that I also declined any further input with my family due to a lack of faith in their abilities and concerns over their approach to my family.

My friend who works at a doctors surgery accesses peoples records and gossips about them. I had to change surgerys and reported her anonymously shes so bad.

Every healthcare IT system I have ever worked on keeps an audit trail of who's accessed a persons record and what they've accessed/changed within the record. NHS workers should never access someones records without a valid reason.

I have been involved in cases where staff members have been sacked for accessing patient data for no valid reason.

If you are concerned about someone accessing your data, then contact the organisation's Information Governance department either through the complaints dept, or directly and ask them to investigate.

A delivery summary will have been sent to the health visitor - so they would know if you had an episiotomy, but not that you had gone to the GP about the healing

do you want a HV?
they are optional

ive a 16 and 10 y old and have never seen one as i oppted out

@Lov3rlybaby

Thank you all for your responses they are really helpful! *@rememberallball* I think my daughter's letter from the team says council... I didn't realise that the council system might have access! How did you refuse consent with the HV team - just write to them?

They are supposed to ask you OP.

I always had to ask women about sharing info and that was 10 years ago. I would imagine in the time of GDPR it’s even more of a factor. I’m not a HV these days so I don’t know exactly how it works any more.

You can absolutely refuse to have confidential information shared with anyone except your GP and other doctors in the practice who might need to see it if you see one of them.

I would speak with the GP and tell them directly that you don’t want your information shared. That should absolutely be respected.

After that what you share with the HV is up to you. Really unless it’s something they can directly help with then there’s no need for them to know.