Discussion Topic:
‘Sharing information and community involvement in planning health and care’
Carers First will be facilitating the next NHS Involving Medway Community Focus Group on Wednesday 16 February.
In January and February 2022, the NHS and partners in Medway and Swale want to find out what local people think about a new health and care topic about the sharing of health data. We particularly want to hear from communities whose voices are less likely to be listened to and from people who are more likely to experience the effects of poor health or inequalities.
All carers are invited to come and get involved by having your say and sharing your views on what you feel is most important when sharing information between health and care services, and what the NHS should be focusing on when planning health and care services in Medway.
The purpose of the forum is to make sure that the views of carers service users and the public help to shape new and existing health and social care services. Involving patients and carers in service planning is one initiative that aims to transfer power from policy makers and the medical profession to the public.
By getting involved, you will be able to help make sure that services:
- fit the needs of the Medway community
- are accessible
- are high quality
- have the potential to impact positively on the health and wellbeing of the wider community
The forums meet 4 times a year and there is a range of different ways for you to get involved. Involvement can be a one-off session, or you may wish to get involved for a longer period of time.
Sue Sutton Carer Support Adviser
This is discussing how you feel about your information and data being shared amongst various Health professionals, GPs, hospitals etc, in the hope that you would not have to keep telling your story and health professionals being able to access all their data for example. You may be for or against it or have other concerns you would like to highlight.
The issue
The Medway and Swale Health and Care partnership is a partnership of local organisations working to deliver better health and care services in Medway and Swale and to improve people’s health and well-being. The partnership wants to work with local communities to stop people getting ill – to prevent the causes of ill-health in our area.
In order to stop people becoming ill health care providers and planners need to be able to use the information we hold for different purposes. For instance, to contact those families where there is a risk of ill- health to work with people to discuss how they can help themselves and be supported.
Who we want to hear from, what we need to talk about
The NHS follows strict rules around sharing information or data about patients. We want to know about what people think about different health and care organisations using data about you and your families in order to improve care – particularly for those with the biggest health problems.
We will be asking carers questions to gather feedback, such as:
- What health and care information do you think is held about you, why and by whom?
- How joined up do you think health and care services are when it comes to using information?
- How joined up do you think health and care services should be?
- If the NHS wants to use data to carry out targeted preventative work with patients, what would concern you?
- Which types of organisations should be able to share data about you and your families?
- What would be the advantages to this sharing of data?
- What would reassure you around making a different use of your information?
Can you list some areas where we can use information as a group of organisations to prevent ill-health? - How should we involve you in making decisions about health data? What would provide you with reassurance?
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