Clause 67 of the Health and Social Care Bill

Clause 67 of the Health and Social Care Bill

Editorials
This is the background for clause 67 of the Health and Social Care Bill, currently going through parliament.6 The bill itself enacts various measures necessary to implement the NHS plan, but clause 67 has been inserted into the bill without any consultation with patient or professional groups. It grants the secretary of state for health two sweeping new powers: (a) to collect all personal health information in identifable form—not just from the NHS, but from the private sector too; and (b) to regulate (or even ban) the use of personal health information by third parties such as Source Informatics. The arguments initially offered to justify these sweeping new powers were surprising. Health minister John Denham claimed that the purpose of the bill was to protect patient information.7 But in reality the clause 67 powers will remove the remaining effective legal restraints that protect patients and doctors from detailed surveillance by central government. A bias against industry also appears in government statements. Denham says he wants to overturn the Source Informatics judgment by legislation because it “allowed a company to sell patient information to the pharmaceutical industry for marketing purposes. The aim of such marketing was to drive up the costs of the drugs prescribed on the NHS, and if successful would lead to a waste of resources.”8 But this is clearly a matter for the pharmaceutical price regulation scheme. Press comment has suggested that the real motive for tightening the regulation of healthcare data is not to hinder drug marketing so much as to suppress “awkward” reports by third parties on NHS performance.9 Comment on a public mailing list devoted to the bill has a similar tone.10 In any case, it is unclear how the health and wellbeing of the nation could be improved by this measure. It will certainly have a chilling effect on the doctor-patient relationship: non-consensual data sharing is contrary to medical ethics and appears to...

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