The business of general practice

The business of general practice

The use of health information for business purposes

Patients can expect their personal information to be used for the following secondary purposes without specific consent being provided:

• ‘normal internal business practice, such as auditing and business planning’⁴
• billing or debt recovery (confidentiality should be maintained).

This expectation also extends to practice staff having access to patient health information for these same purposes.

Practices should seek advice confirming this before disclosure to any third-party service provider involved for these purposes.

Group practices

In group practices that allocate GPs to patients based on availability, a patient’s health information will be disclosed to and used by whichever GP sees the patient.

New patients should be informed of this rolling or rotating use of GPs. Patients should also be notified of the consulting GP when booking their appointment. In this situation, consent can be inferred to the use and disclosure of the patient’s health information if the patient does not otherwise object to seeing the allocated GP.

This principle extends to new GPs employed into existing practices or partnerships.