| Public Reports: Ethical and legal issues - in detail
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 [1997]
Caldicott report on the review of patient-identifiable information
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From the foreward:
"This Review was commissioned by the Chief Medical Officer of England owing to increasing concern about the ways in which patient information is used in the NHS in England and Wales and the need to ensure that confidentiality is not undermined.
"Such concern was largely due to the development of information technology in the service, and its capacity to disseminate information about patients rapidly and extensively.
"In 1996 guidance on "The Protection and Use of Patient Information" was promulgated. We need to promote awareness of it at all levels in the NHS.
"It is a truism that confidentiality is an essential component of the clinical consultation in the provision of health care. The clinical professions have stringent requirements with regard to confidentiality in their codes of ethics.
"However, information about patients, not directly associated with their clinical care, underpins the efficient operation of the NHS, and its importance cannot be overstated...
"It is clearly important that confidentiality does not impede the provision of prompt and effective patient care. But at times there is a tension between the needs of the service for patient information and the expectation of patients that information about them will be kept confidential...
"Increasing adherence to [explicit and transparent principles of good practice] will reassure patients and those treating them that confidentiality is safeguarded... We believe that the principles outlined here should also be applied to information identifiable to individual patients concerned with their clinical care, and medical research. It is clear that patients expect nothing less."
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| acknowledgements |
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| page history |
Entry on OpenClinical:
2005
Last main update: 01 October 2005 |
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Report (Department of Health)