Council Meeting

12th February 2020

Present 

Dr Chris Bunch (Chairman), Sandra Lomax (Vice Chair), Gill Bennett, Carey Bloomer, Prof. Martin Crook, Dr Arjun Dhillon, Helen Dyer, Christopher Fincken, Andrew Harvey, Mr Adrian Marchbank, Srg. Cdr Powell, David Riley.

Guests 

Nona Ahmet (NHSE & NHSI), Alex Davison (The Law Commission).

Observers

Ross Thornton (NDGO); Dr Tom Fowler (Genomics England).

Apologies

Dr Faouzi Alam, Sandra Cornwall, Lucy Hubber, Prof. Alison McAllum, Nina Monckton, Dr Matt Noble, Dr Cait Taylor, Air Cdr Withnail, Dr Fenella Wrigley. 

Declarations

Conflicts of interest from Christopher Fincken and Sandra Lomax (as training providers) were noted.

Action log

There are currently one open action, one standing item, and 5 actions that have been completed since the last meeting.

Chairman’s update 

The Chairman updated council members on his recent meetings including attending the December Local Health and Care Record Exemplar (LHCRE) Assurance Panel, an RBAC workshop, the National Data Guardian’s Panel, the UKCGC northern network workshop and dialling into the Cyber Security Programme Board. 

Dr Bunch also updated members on progress with the Caldicott Guardian mailing list derived from the Data Security protection Toolkit and plans to issue a newsletter to all Caldicott Guardians across health and care in the coming weeks. 

Vice-chair’s update

The Vice Chair updated council members regarding delivering the UKCGC Northern network workshop meeting, dealing with a number of queries around compliance with the National Data Opt-out by the deadline, and recent engagement with colleagues from Social Care.

Regional networks update

The Northern network held a well-attended workshop in Leeds on January 17th which received very good feedback.

The South West network is in the process of transitioning to a new Chair.

London network: Tim Kendall has moved into a new role and will no longer be a Caldicott Guardian for his company. He has resigned from both the Council and his role as chair of the London network. Council expressed sincere thanks for all his work in developing and building the London Caldicott Guardian network, and wished him well for the future.

Pathfinder Domestic Violence Update

Helen Dyer talked Council members through the summary report regarding the the Pathfinder Domestic Violence information sharing meeting that she attended on behalf of Christopher Fincken and the UKCGC.

The NHSE/I Patient Safety Strategy

Nona Ahmet, Head of Patient Safety Cross System Development at NHS Improvement / England, presented its Patient Safety Strategy and the implementation and establishment of Patient Safety Specialists, which are currently under consultation. Council members expressed support for such an important area and offered guidance and advice on implementing the new role, based on the experience of establishing Caldicott Guardians and the necessary supporting mechanisms. 

The Law Commission

Alex Davidson a law reform lawyer from the Law Commission presented his work leading on a review of the law governing search warrants. One of the components of the Law Commission’s work is looking at the protection afforded to personal records under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. In particular, considering the circumstances under which medical records should be obtainable under a search warrant. Council members described their personal experience in their Caldicott Guardian roles of cases  involving police access to medical records. The Law Commission agreed to circulate a draft copy of the new chapter for review at the appropriate time. 

National Data Opt-out discussions

The Council discussed the implementation of the National Data Opt-out. Two main challenges to achieving compliance with the Opt-out compliance were raised. 

The main concern relates to strategies to implement the Opt-out at a local level, with particular reference to the national clinical audits that rely on direct clinician data entry at patient level. Mr Adrian Marchbank described University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust’s engagement with NHS Digital and implementation of a local solution to the problem. This uses the MESH tool to create and maintain a local list of the NHS numbers of their patients that have not opted-out to check which of their patients in their data warehouse have or have not opted-out. Staff can then use a local query tool to check each case before submitting the audit data. 

The second concern raised was regarding the guidance accompanying the policy, which was thought to be over-long, and contradictory in places (in particular on the NHS Digital webpages). The Council agreed to escalate these concerns as appropriate to the National data Guardian, NHSX and NHS Digital.