Who needs to know about this guide

We all do. Confidentiality is too important a subject to be delegated to the few experts who have taken the trouble to master the laws and customs that underpin it. Across England, more than a million people a day make contact with health and social care services, expecting that they can trust the professionals looking after them with confidential information.

Unless those patients and service users understand how confidential information about them will be used and who will get to see it, they cannot be considered to be fully informed when they consent to treatment or care.

And unless members of staff understand when they must share information with another professional and when they should not, they will not be able to provide the optimum standard of care. Lives may be lost if information is not shared as it should be. Indeed the new Caldicott Principle recognises this when it states ‘the duty to share information can be as important as the duty to protect confidentiality.

The rules within this guide are applicable to everyone using or sharing confidential information which has been collected through publicly funded health and adult social care activities concerning or related to the provision of care for an individual. This could include, for example, the costs of their treatment as well as information within the care record.

The guide describes the confidentiality  rules that people are entitled to expect to be followed in care settings run by the NHS or publicly funded adult social care services. Therefore, if  a patient has an operation in an NHS hospital and is discharged to an independent care home (within the private or voluntary sector) for which public funding is received, that independent provider should also follow this guide when handling the information sent to support ongoing care.

The independent sector has been fully involved in developing this guide. All organisations are encouraged to follow the guide, which summarises existing laws, principles and obligations in an accessible way.

Whilst the guide does highlight how the rules can be applied in practice, it is not restricted to good practice so provides readers with a full picture of what they should do and why.