To think they shouldn't have access to my records...

[Lan2020]

A bit of a random one.
I received a missed phonecall this morning and listened to the voicemail half hour ago.

Voicemail said "Hello this is Dr XXX it's is now 10.40. please can you can me back at XXX surgery"

The surgery is where I grew up and where I was registered until I was 18 years old.
I've since registered with another surgery when I moved and then another surgery when I moved again. I've not been registered with the previous surgery for 17 years! And been with my current surgery for 15 years.

So I call back having a bit of a panic because all my family are registered with this surgery and I'm worried maybe something has happened to a family member.

I call back and receptionist says I was booked in for an appointment. I explained that I've not been registered there for 17 years and she is just as confused.
The strangest thing is that I've changed my phone number at least twice after the last few years. There is no way that they would have my phone number!
The receptionist said she would have to ask the lady who booked the appointment, as maybe I was confused with another patient.

Surely I shouldn't be on their system as I've not been registered there or living in the area for so long. Also, how would they have my mobile number? Baffled!

I assume no one in your family is batshit enough to have made an appointment pretending to be you?

I think phone numbers can get transferred across NHS records. Last time I went to the hospital they had a phone number recorded for me from my parents house where I haven't lived for 15 years (this is a hospital at the other end of the country!). Not sure about the other way round though!!

If you're registered with the NHS I assume it's universal.

As in, your phone number and details are stored centrally, not in each practice. That's how hospitals get access to your records when you're in.

Looks like someone has managed to either mistakenly reassign you to your old surgery or they've managed to drag your details from the server.

Has someone in your family booked an appointment for them and given your details instead - my moms done this when she’s been multitasking and given my dads details and then confused the Gp when she showed up for the appointment.

We had this problem when an elderly patient of our surgery started giving our telephone nuber out as his own. His surname was similar and there was one digit difference in the numbers. The surgery used to ring us about his medication, so it was worrying. It did eventually get sorted but we had a lot of calls from dry cleaners etc.

Maybe I am wrong, but I think the systems are rather more centralised than they used to be. So some details can be seen if there is a reason for it?

Sounds like there has been a muddle in your case though. They should still refer back to your current GP surgery when needed, not one you have long been deregistered from.

Is this a local surgery? Are you waiting for any appointment?

Surgeries are now linked together so some services will take place in one surgery and others at another. Could it be that you were do to see a GP for a back problem for instance and they referred you a physio triage nurse at your old surgery in behalf of your current one?

Your nhs data is held on a spine which is updated with all the services at once.

Thanks for the comments. I don't have any crazy family members that would have booked me in, I'm very close to all my family.

Also, this surgery is over 100 miles away and not in my health board area, so definitely not linked with my current surgery. I didn't realise they were all connected, I've recently moved and had to give my new address seperately to the doctor's, hospital and another dept of hospital as apparently they don't communicate.

I thought once you moved surgeries your records transferred (in the electronic sense these days as it's no longer paper). So I didn't realise na old surgery that I was with almost 20 years ago would have me active on their system.

There is an NHS 'spine' that pulls very minimal data from all the various systems that the nhs use. So if I register someone on my NHS system it will link some info from the 'spine' like a mobile number. Equally if someone changes address at their GP it will populate over the spine on to our mental health system. So that's probably how they got your number- if that makes sense.
Doesn't explain who made the appointment though!

Write to the practice manager and ask them to investigate and explain. I would be very concerned about this in terms of data protection.

I wouldn't be worried about it at all.