Wirral PCT faces local data privacy backlash

Wirral Primary Care Trust has delayed plans to introduce a telephone support service provided by a US contractor, after a local outcry at plans to transfer extracts from patient records to a private company.

The proposed new health coaching service, called ‘Wirral Keep Well’, provided by Health Dialog UK, that provides targeted phone advice and support services for people with long-term conditions including diabetes, asthma, chronic respitory disease and other chronic diseases.

Health Dialog UK is a subsidiary of US firm Health Dialog, itself owned by Bupa. 

Due to have launched this autumn the service is designed to try to reduce hospital admissions by carefully analysing referral and treatment data and targeting patients likely to require treatment.

However, Wirral PCT has come under fire for failing to consult patients on plans to transfer their names and comtact details to Health Dialogue. The transfer of patient identifiable data was planned to come after the provision of anonymised treatment data. The PCT says this treatment data “cannot be directly linekd back to any individual”.

Patients were notified of the new service by mail giving them just two weeks to opt out of the service if they objected to having summaries of their records transferred to Health Dialog.

The PCT says it has followed DH guidance in the provision of the “opt out” provision. It also denies local press reports that patient records will be transferred to the US. Instead the planned telephone advice service will be provided from a call centre in Cambridgeshire.

Wirral PCT said in a statement: “Anonymised information will in due course be sent by the Health Dialog UK’s (a subsidiary of Bupa) offices in Manchester and Cambridge, England.”

The statement added: “All data will remain in the UK, be held securely and only used in accordance with the current data protection laws.” The PCT went on to stress that the Health Coach service is intended to be complementary to existing GP services.

Health Dialog provides a range of services to PCTs to help reduce hospital adminissions, including data analytics and modelling, through to patient life coaching and support services delivere over the phone bu nurses.

In a letter to the local newspaper, the Wirral Globe, the PCT’s chief executive Kathy Doran acknowledged local concerns about the data transfer plans: “Concerns were mainly around data protection, confidentiality of patient information, a lack of clarity on the benefits of the service for patients and the way this was communicated to Wirral residents.”

Doran went on to stress, however, that the plans met with NHS data protection regulations. “There has never been any intention to send patient data to America, nor will there be. I can also assure your readers that no data has been shared, nor do they need to take any further action in respect of opting out.”

A spokesperson for Wirral PCT told EHI Primary Care the introduction of the ‘Wirral Keep Well’ service will now be delayed for a few months while the PCT addresses the issues around patient consent and data confidentiality.

Health Dialog has contracts with several other PCTs nationally to provide similar patient services. Among the NHS organisations it holds contracts with is Wirral PCT’s neighbour Western Cheshire PCT.

Western Cheshire also extracted data from existing GP electronic patient records and wrote to the local population sending them a postcard asking them whether they wanted to opt-out of the scheme.

The health coach model provdied by Health Dialog has already been trialled in other parts of the country, including Surrey and Norfolk.