Frequently asked questions
More information for health services and patients.
For patients
What is the Your Health Summary?
Your Health Summary is a secure database which holds a summary of your health record.
What is it used for?
If, for some reason you need to visit a doctor that is not part of your general practice the doctor can provide you with safer healthcare by having access to a summary of your health record. Ultimately it means you can continue to get the very best care if you cannot get to your regular practice or need urgent health care elsewhere.
Why do we need to have this?
This information gives another approved doctor or health professional information about your medication, allergies and any conditions that may affect your care when you cannot see your regular GP. It makes sure tests are not repeated unnecessarily and better decisions based on having a fuller picture of your health.
Is every GP clinic in Auckland part of this?
All GP clinics in Auckland are encouraged to activate Your Health Summary. It is endorsed by all primary health organisations (PHOs) and district health boards (DHBs) in our region as a way of improving patient safety.
How long has Your Health Summary been operating?
Your Health Summary was established during Covid-19, but has been considered over a long time by primary care provider and DHBs. Similar systems are already in place across the rest of the country (they have different names but the principles of the system are the same).
Can I see what information is held about me in the Your Health Summary record?
Your Health Summary Record is only available to approved clinicians. You can also request a copy of your record from Your Health Summary. Your Health Summary will validate your identity and then provide a copy to you as an encrypted pdf.
Can my information be changed?
Your Health Summary is based on information from your medical centre and provides timely information to other healthcare providers involved in your care. Information within Your Health Summary cannot be changed directly. If relevant information is changed or updated in the medical centre, then Your Health Summary will be changed.
Is my information safe?
Yes – the information is held securely and can only be accessed by approved, registered health professionals.
What information can they see?
The information is a summary of your medications, medical conditions, allergies, x-ray results, immunisations, and laboratory results. It does not include the consultation notes.
Can I stop my information going into Your Health Summary?
Yes – you can opt off from Your Health Summary. This means health professionals would not be able to use Your Health Summary when providing you with healthcare services. This may in some cases lead to delays as tests might have to be repeated. Your care can also be adversely affected if the treating clinician does not have accurate information about your long-term conditions, regular medications and any allergies.
How do I opt off?
Email your name, contact details and date of birth to contact@yourhealthsummary.org.nz and confirm that you do not want your information shared. Someone from the Your Health Summary team will be in touch with you to advise next steps.
For health services
What is the purpose of Your Health Summary?
Sharing health information through Your Health Summary (YHS) improves patient safety and allows better continuity of care. This is particularly helpful during the Covid-19 pandemic, when patients who are confirmed or suspected to have Covid-19 may require urgent healthcare services outside of their regular practice. Activating YHS means you will be able to practice safer medicine when seeing casual patients.
Sharing health information through Your Health Summary will allow patients to receive the best care possible by:
Alerting health professionals to any risks due to allergies, medications or conditions patients may have (even if they’re unable to communicate)
Making sure tests are not repeated unnecessarily
Enabling better decisions to be made about care
Allowing patients to have safe care with continuity regardless of the location of the health professional.
Will Your Health Summary remain important as we start to see less cases of Covid-19?
It is very heartening to see less reports of Covid-19 in the community. However, overseas experience tells us that there can still be sudden increases of Covid-19 cases and further community spread. Having YHS in place will be extremely helpful to help us manage these surges whether from Covid-19 or other conditions that place a considerable demand on our frontline services, such as large outbreaks of influenza like illness. YHS will also be very helpful for those most vulnerable in our population who we know often access episodic care from different providers.
How long will this be in place?
Initially Your Health Summary will be in place for the next 6 months, however, if it proves useful, it may be extended. A similar system has been operating successfully since 2018 in other regions, including the Wairarapa, MidCentral, Hutt Valley, Whanganui and Capital and Coast districts.
What is the technology behind Your Health Summary?
The technology behind Your Health Summary is the Valentia Technologies Shared Electronic Health Record product. In technical terms this involves a C+ data extraction utility connecting to your PMS database to query the data. The query summarises and packages data for your patients and transfers these via a web service in the secure data centre. Only the data required for YHS is transferred. The data is encrypted both during transfer and at rest.
In the event provisional access was denied by the YHS Clinical Director an applicant may appeal to the YHS CGC for a review of the decision. Access will not be granted until YHS CGC has approved the application in this instance. Some organisations such as St John or Healthline may require different arrangements for access due to the nature of their work and workforce. These types of applications must be custom made between the Applicant and the YHS Clinical Director and approved by the YHS CGC prior to access being granted.
What can the information be used for?
Your Health Summary will only be used for the purpose of delivering healthcare for the individual patient. Sharing health information through Your Health Summary will allow patients to receive the best care possible by:
Alerting health professionals to any risks due to allergies, medications or conditions patients may have (even if they’re unable to communicate)
Making sure tests are not repeated unnecessarily Enabling faster and better decisions to be made about care.
Your Health Summary is only for use in providing care to patients directly and only by clinicians with approved access to the YHS. It is not available for use in population health monitoring or for assessment of clinical performance. It is not accessible by Insurance companies or Government agencies unless required by law.
Who is able to access the information?
Healthcare providers with a clear purpose and need to enable them to provide care to patients may request access. Each application will be vetted by the YHS Clinical Director and provisional approval will be either given or denied. If provisional approval is granted, then usernames and passwords will be allocated to named registered health professionals where appropriate and to clinic administrators (with restricted / non-clinical access rights).
Providers who may request access include:
General Practitioners
Nurse Practitioners
Practice Nurses
Urgent Care Doctors
Hospital specialists
Healthline call handlers
Community Pharmacists
Paramedics
The process for a clinician to gain ‘approved access’ to Your Health Summary in order to access patient records requires an application to the Clinical Director of Your Health Summary. The Clinical Director assesses the request and decides whether or not provisional access should be granted. All approvals and denials of access are ratified by the Clinical Governance Committee (CGC) for Your Health Summary. The CGC is made up of clinical representatives from every PHO who has practices submitting data to Your Health Summary, and includes specific consideration of Māori data governance principles.
In the event provisional access was denied by the YHS Clinical Director an applicant may appeal to the YHS CGC for a review of the decision. Access will not be granted until YHS CGC has approved the application in this instance. Some organisations such as St John or Healthline may require different arrangements for access due to the nature of their work and workforce. These types of applications must be custom made between the Applicant and the YHS Clinical Director and approved by the YHS CGC prior to access being granted.
What if my patients do not want their records to be shared?
Individual patients may choose to opt out of having a shared record or to withhold specific health information from their record at any time. If they chose to opt-out, the health professional caring for them may not have immediate access to valuable health information, this could mean additional tests are needed and may delay appropriate treatment. To opt patients out please email the NHI number to contact@yourhealthsummary.org.nz . Patients may also contact YHS wishing to opt-out, requests received by YHS will follow an identification process prior to being actioned.
Do we have consent to share information in this way?
When a patient enrols with your practice they indicate on the enrolment form that they have read and understood the Use of Health Information Statement. The Health Information Statement lets patients know that their health information will be shared with others involved in their healthcare. It also advises patients they do not have to share their health information, however, withholding it may affect the quality of care received. The purpose for this facility is entirely in keeping with this consent since the information is only available to clinicians directly involved in providing care to an individual patient. A privacy impact assessment has been completed to:
Identify the potential effects an electronic summary Your Health Summary has upon individual privacy
Ensure the YHS continues to comply with the twelve Health Information Privacy Code (HIPC) principles
Identify the mechanisms used to mitigate any undesirable impacts identified
Ensure that care and diligence has been taken in the implementation of the YHS.
Can I stop certain people or clinics from seeing information about my patients?
Each application for access will be vetted by the YHS Clinical Director and provisional approval will be either given or denied. Provisional access granted by the YHS Clinical Director will be presented to a regional Clinical Governance Group (YHS CGG) to ratify and approve. In the event concerns are raised by YHS CGG, access will be revoked. If you have concerns about specific people or clinics having access you should raise these with the YHS Clinical Director by contacting contact@yourhealthsummary.org.nz.
Once a clinician has access to YHS, they will be able to view all patient records for those patients who have not asked to have their record removed. All clinicians accessing the system are subject to audit and patients are able to ask for a report of who has accessed their YHS record.
Who is monitoring / auditing the access to the YHS?
A full time dedicated auditor is appointed by the YHS service to undertake routine and specific audits of access. This is reported to the Clinical Director of YHS and to the designated Regional YHS Governance Group. The YHS Clinical Director is independent of the Service and is able to audit the access to YHS by any YHS service staff and any of the technology vendor.
How is access to the Your Health Summary audited and monitored?
Each time a patient’s clinical data is viewed on YHS this is recorded in the audit log. Monthly random sample audits are conducted by the designated Regional Governance Group to match access to health information via YHS to patient presentations at alternative care facilities.
What happens to people or clinics that break the rules of access or abuse the information in YHS?
Unauthorised or inappropriate use of the information in YHS action will be investigated by the YHS Clinical Director on behalf of the Regional Governance Group. Action taken may include:
Revoking access to Your Health Summary,
Reporting the breach to the appropriate professional body and
Other penalties that could be imposed under NZ legislation and the Health Information Privacy Code 1994.
Will clinics or other health organisations be able to use the fact they have access to patient records across the Auckland region as a promotional tool?
No. The terms of the agreement stipulate that clinicians who have authorised access to YHS cannot use this as a promotional or marketing message/tool.
Will I know who has accessed my patient’s information?
The health professional accessing YHS is encouraged to record their assessment and management decision in their PMS and notify the patients usual GP of this update.
Can people make changes to my records through the YHS?
No people cannot make changes, YHS is read only.
Is the YHS a medical record?
Your Health Summary is not a complete medical record. It must be used in conjunction with standard history taking methodologies, and should not be relied on by itself.
Is Your Health Summary different from TestSafe?
Yes it is. Your Health Summary holds information not held in TestSafe. The majority of healthcare is delivered in the community and YHS is a way of capturing a summary of this information whereas TestSafe mainly captures hospital activity.
Your Health Summary adds classifications, immunisations, allergies and alerts, radiology reports and letters from private/ACC consults.
Can patients access their information in Your Health Summary?
If patients have a patient portal, they can access a summary of their health information. In most cases this is the same as what is recorded in YHS. This could differ slightly due to what their general practice has opted to include within their patient portal.
Patients without a patient portal or those who would like a more complete view of their health information held on YHS, can request the information held about them from their practice or from contact@yourhealthsummary.org.nz. Patients can visit yourhealthsummary.org.nz or phone their PHO to ascertain if a YHS record exists for them.
Who owns the information in the YHS?
The information in YHS is jointly owned by you and your patient.
What do I need to do to get my data uploaded to YHS?
Your PHO or the YHS Service Manager will contact you to help organise uploading your data. The first step is signing an agreement which includes your practice’s consent to upload the data. Following your practice giving consent, our help desk will contact you to arrange a time to install and set up YHS data extraction utility. The YHS data extraction utility will automatically extract data from your PMS. When the data extraction utility first runs it will extract all the required data, once the first run is complete it will run at intervals and only extract incremental data so it does not affect your practice. The YHS data extraction utility will not write data to your PMS as part of this process.
Can I withdraw my patients’ information from YHS?
If you wish to withdraw your patient information from Your Health Summary please contact the YHS Clinical Director to discuss your concerns contact@yourhealthsummary.org.nz
What happens to the patient’s data?
If a patient has opt-off their data is not loaded to the YHS database. When data is extracted from the PMS it is loaded to a staging database prior to being loaded to the YHS database, if a patient has opted off their data will be deleted in the staging phase and will not be loaded into the YHS database. If a patient opts-off after data has been loaded to the YHS database it will be deleted when they opt-off.
How do I explain the YHS to my patients if they ask for more details?
You can refer them to the YHS website for further information: yourhealthsummary.org.nz
What do I need to tell my patients about YHS?
Patients should be made aware of the types of information shared and the care settings in which that information is available.
Will aggregated YHS data be available and if so to whom?
Aggregated data will not be available. The Your Health Summary facility is only for use in providing care to patients directly and only by clinicians with approved access to the YHS. It is not available for use in any population health monitoring or for assessment of clinical performance. It is not accessible by Insurance companies or Government agencies unless required by law.
What do I do if I think someone is abusing YHS?
If you think someone is abusing YHS you should contact the YHS Clinical Director via contact@yourhealthsummary.org.nz
Why do we need to sign two agreements?
One agreement is for your practice to register with Your Health Summary where you agree to upload your patient information to the YHS cloud. The other practice agreement needs to be signed on behalf of your entire practice. This agreement means the practice can now use and access the Your Health Summary platform. This agreement also covers strict privacy regulations.
Can I use Your Health Summary on behalf of my family members?
It is only permitted to access Your Health Summary when directly involved in delivering healthcare for a patient. It is not permitted to access the system for the purpose of retrieving information regarding family members or other people close to you.