There have been huge changes in primary care and increasingly the best person for you to see may not be your own GP, as we have other Health Care professionals that may be able to support you, for example a Nurse or Physiotherapist.

We have also had to make many changes due to the current COVID-19 pandemic. Rowden Surgery is now part of a Primary Care Network (PCN) and works closely with the surgeries across Chippenham, Corsham and Box and we are collectively known as ‘CCB PCN’. Part of our role is to find new and better ways to work more closely together. To enable us to work more closely together, we need to improve the way that we access our patients’ notes. From September 2020, we have adopted a process called “Shared Administration.”

This means that our Doctors, Health Care and Administrative staff, who work in our surgeries, will be able to access the notes of all of our patients in the surgeries across our PCN. We want to reassure you that even without sharing your clinical record, the NHS will still be able to provide the Health Care that you need. However, it will restrict the ways that we are able to provide that care. Examples include receiving same-day access to a physiotherapist working in another surgery in our PCN or being seen in our “Hot Hub” where we are reviewing any suspected COVID-19 patients in a separate, clean and safe environment.

It is possible for you to opt out of this new way of sharing access to your medical notes, but this may restrict the ways that we are able to provide care for you. We want to reassure you that all of the GP surgeries in our PCN have very strict rules about confidentiality with how and when our patients’ notes can be accessed and that your ongoing privacy is of the utmost importance to us.

If you wish to opt out of shared administration, please let us know and we can update your records.