Accreditation practice pointer: obtaining patient consent prior to sharing health information with third parties
C3.6 C Our practice only transfers identified patient health information to a third party for quality improvement or professional development activities after we have obtained the patient’s consent.
RACGP Standards for general practice
This Criterion does not apply to general practices that do not conduct any research.
Patient consent must be sought for the research projects, which require general practices and primary care clinicians to transfer the health information of identified patients to a third party. During the consent process, the patients must be provided with a clear explanation about the purpose of the research project. The patient’s consent and discussion must be documented in the patient’s health record.
General practices can simplify the consent process by seeking patient consent for the use and transfer of health information on new patient registration forms.
General practices participating in such research projects, must maintain a privacy policy. Practices might also maintain a policy about managing patients’ health information.
Should patients prefer not to participate, they must be assured their decision will not impact on the quality of their primary healthcare.
The RACGP has recently updated the Guiding principles for managing requests for the secondary use of de-identified general practice data to help practices make informed decisions about releasing practice data.