Ensure your Hospital can access your Advanced Decision Notice!

In an emergency, can your hospital access your Advance Decision Notice?

This is covered in some depth on the My Medical Choice FAQs page, and the basic answer is: only if you’ve been an inpatient at the hospital before and the hospital already has some records on you.

So, it may be worth thinking about adding your Advance Decision Notice (ADN – or Living Will) to your hospital records if you have concerns that you may be in an accident one day and find yourself without your ADN in your purse or wallet whilst also not wearing your medical alert jewellery tag. Without your tag or ADN, emergency services would be unable to log into your My Medical Choice personal account page to find your essential medical data and legal documents – meaning NHS staff may not give you healthcare that complies with your wishes. If you have no ID on you at all, they won’t be able to call your emergency contact or your GP.

On the other hand, many members find the sharing of their personal data with other NHS-linked private organisations an intrusion on their right to privacy and have instead chosen to opt out of medical data sharing. They may consider their decision to file their ADN with their GP surgery enough of a compromise to their privacy. And, of course, the chances of a serious accident occurring at the precise time you are alone and not in your vehicle, aren’t carrying ID of any kind, aren’t wearing your medical alert tag, and don’t have your ADN on you are incredibly small.

As always, the choice is down to the individual member. But if adding your ADN to hospital records is something that interests you, you can look into the process here:

https://www.nhs.uk/nhs-app/nhs-app-help-and-support/health-records-in-the-nhs-app/personal-health-records/ – (a snippet from the NHS document listed, is shown, below)

Access personal health record services in your NHS App

If your GP surgery or hospital offers personal health record services, you may see any of the following options:

• view messages from your hospital and specialist doctors
• hospital and other appointments (view or manage appointments)
• shared links
• care plans
• hospital and other medicines
• track your health
• record sharing
• update your personal details
• ask your GP surgery a question or send a request for things like test results, fit notes (sick notes) or GP letters
• patient participation group

Personal health record service providers

Your GP surgery or hospital contracts with one or more providers to deliver personal health record services. The providers are commercial organisations. They provide a service on behalf of your GP surgery or hospital.

We currently support personal health record services with Patients Know Best Ltd, Substrakt Health and DrDoctor.

Patients Know Best Ltd

The following personal health record services are available from Patients Know Best Ltd.

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Informed Consent Within UK Healthcare System

For an example of an Advanced Decision Notice (or Living Will), visit our FAQ page.

My Medical Choice is all about your Medical Autonomy in healthcare and making sure the emergency team treating you follows your specific wishes. When used correctly, it is a powerful system that can notify medical teams about allergies, procedures etc., right down to more personalised decisions such as people concerned about mRNA in blood, and/or, wanting a solution to vaccinated blood (as listed in the examples in some articles).

My Medical Choice is not here to judge your decision, it is about empowering people to have control over their own healthcare.