The public can and must learn that the government will have to manage their medical records, the Shadow Health Secretary Stephen O'Brien said today.
Mr. O'Brien was speaking at the Conservative Conference fringe on Tuesday 6 October entitled 'Health Information; who owns your medical records'. Also speaking at the event sponsored by Reform and Dr Foster Intelligence were Tim Kelsey, Chair of Dr Foster, Andrew Haldenby Director of Reform, and Stephen Collier, General Counsel at BMI Healthcare.
Reiterating the 'you can't handle the truth' speech made by Jack Nicholson in the film 'A Few Good Men', Mr. O'Brien said, 'I think the public can and have to handle the truth'. He went on to suggest that if medical records existed, it was everyone's collective responsibility to decide on how they should be managed.
The government had been 'a poor guardian of (data)', the shadow minister claimed, stating that a Conservative government would improve the current situation.
He reminded attendees of the 'state-owned system' which the government had introduced 'after little or no consultation' in 2004, for which he said the possibility of an opt-out for patients had originally been ruled out.
Criticising the government for believing the public could not make decisions on individuals' medical records, Mr. O'Brien said, "The government assumed our medical records were theirs to do with (what they wanted)." He noted that the government had since decided that an opt-out would be possible.
The Conservatives felt that the public deserved better, Mr O'Brien declared. If they formed the next government, the party would develop a policy which offered more than a black-and-white opt-out situation, he claimed.
Continuing, Mr. O'Brien said his party had reached the conclusion that a 'better deal' could be secured practically and intellectually if records were held locally instead of on the current national database.
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