Tag: Lord Trefgarne

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Trefgarne on 2014-06-04.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the present arrangements for the protection of patients’ private medical information by general practitioners.

Earl Howe

General practitioner (GP) practices are individually responsible for ensuring that they comply with legal and ethical requirements and central guidance in relation to data protection and patient confidentiality. A majority of GP practices in England provide assurance that they do so by completing annual assessments of their compliance against information governance requirements through the National Health Service Information Governance Toolkit, and the results of these assessments are publicly available.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Trefgarne on 2014-06-04.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what are the rules relating to the release of patients’ private medical information to insurance companies by general practitioners.

Earl Howe

General practitioners (GPs) must ensure that patients have provided explicit consent before disclosing information to insurance companies. Additionally, under the provisions of the Access to Medical Reports Act 1988, patients have the right to view medical reports prepared for insurance companies and, where a patient has exercised this right, a GP cannot disclose the report to the insurance company until the patient has had the opportunity to review it or if the patient withdraws their consent.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Trefgarne on 2014-06-04.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is the average time taken by general practitioners to complete the medical forms required by candidates for the Territorial Army and Army Reserve; and what is the number presently outstanding.

Lord Astor of Hever

The average time taken by General Practitioners to complete medical forms for Army Reserve applicants is 29 days. This includes the time taken by the candidate to provide the documents to their General Practitioner as well as the time taken by General Practitioners to process the forms. This has reduced from 37 days which was the average prior to the implementation of the improved medical process for recruits in February 2014.

As at 6 June 2014, 1,315 sets of Army Reserve medical declaration documents were outstanding.