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Direct-care sharing route

Starting position

Relevant information should be available to professionals providing an individual’s care when sharing is necessary, proportionate, need-to-know, expected by the person, secure, and within the participating organisations’ lawful functions. NHS England’s primary-care guidance treats implied consent under the common-law duty of confidentiality as available for appropriate individual-care sharing unless the person objects. This is not the same as using consent as the UK GDPR Article 6 basis. SRC-007

Section 251B creates a qualified duty for relevant health and adult-social-care bodies to disclose information when the disclosure is likely to facilitate an individual’s care and is in their best interests. The duty is constrained by statutory exceptions, including objections and other legal restrictions; it does not override data protection or confidentiality. SRC-006

Direct-care test

  1. Confirm the recipient is actually participating in this person’s care, not merely working in a care organisation.
  2. Confirm the disclosure is likely to facilitate care and is in the person’s best interests.
  3. Select and record Article 6 and Article 9 conditions for each controller.
  4. Confirm the person has been informed in a meaningful way and has not objected, or document the exceptional basis for proceeding.
  5. Limit information and access by current role, relationship and task.
  6. Apply standards, clinical-safety, data-quality, security, audit and lifecycle controls.
  7. Reassess if information is reused for audit, research, commissioning, planning or another beyond-care purpose.

“Whole record” caution

A structured GP record or shared-care view can be technically accessible without every field being appropriate for every viewer. Sensitive codes, third-party information, safeguarding material, private notes, genomic data, reproductive or sexual-health information, and data carrying special statutory constraints require use-case and role-specific design.

For implementation, see shared-care and GP Connect, terminology and identifiers, clinical safety and security, and sharing with the wider NHS.