SystmOnline
What is it?
Put simply it's a 24 hours a day, 7 days a week means of contacting your GP surgery and accessing your medical record.
There are many benefits to using our online services;
- Book, change or cancel an appointment
- View and order repeat medication
- See test results
- See GP and hospital letters
- View your health record
- Share your medical record with a third party
How to register for Online Services
If you have not used our online services before you will need to:
- Come to the Surgery and provide photo ID so we can confirm your identity and the receptionist will then issue you with a username and password.
- Enter SystmOnline and enter your registration details exactly as shown on the form.
- After registering, log on with your username and password.
Alternatively, you can register for the NHS App and use their in built identity check. For more information please visit How to Prove Who You Are
Help & Support
The Practice team will, as always, be available to help and support you with reconnecting your Online Access but if you have problems logging into your online account you would need to contact their support desk for assistance as the practice cannot reset passwords.
Proxy Access
You can now request to act as a proxy for children, relatives and dependants that you care for using Online Access.
This enables a parent, family member or carer to act on behalf of the patient with their access tailored accordingly. The proxy feature has gone through rigorous analysis to ensure there are no data privacy risks.
Appointment booking, repeat medication requests, messaging and, where applicable, access to medical records, can easily be accessed by the proxy once a relative or person has been linked.
If the relative or person you wish to act on behalf of is at a different practice to yourself, you can ask your relative’s GP Practice to register you for proxy access.
To request proxy access please send an email to reception.
Parents or the registered carers of children (with the permission of the children’s parents or those granted legal guardianship) are able to have access to their children’s records and this will be linked to the parent’s online account. The Parent/guardian will need to confirm parental responsibility – which in majority of cases will be the viewing of the child’s birth certificate. There are however strict guidelines relating to children’s medical records and from age 11 online access will automatically stop. This is to ensure that children have the opportunity to access medical help with the knowledge that this will be confidential.
If you have a child over the age of 11 and would like access to their online medical records they must be present when this is requested and freely give consent. If consent is granted then the access date will be extended to the child’s 13th birthday when it will then automatically stop. The guidelines that we follow in relating to children are called Gillick Competence and Fraser Guidelines. Information relating specifically to these guidelines can found below.
Between the ages of 13 and 16 the parent/guardian can continue to have access with the child’s consent if the child is deemed competent by his/her GP. The child can also be granted access. It is a local practice decision whether online services are available to children in their own right under the age of 16. On reaching the age of 16, parental access ceases and rules governing access for adult patients apply.
The NHS England patient guide Young People’s Access to GP Online Services explains how to set this up.
Background information
In UK law, a person’s 18 birthday draws the line between childhood and adulthood (Children Act 1989 s105) – so in health care matters, an 18 year old enjoys as much autonomy as any other adult. To a more limited extent, 16 and 17 year-olds can also take medical decisions independently of their parents.
The right of younger children to provide independent consent is proportionate to their competence – a child’s age alone is clearly an unreliable predictor of his or her competence to make decisions.
The ‘Gillick Test’ helps clinicians to identify children aged under 16 who have the legal capacity to consent to medical examination and treatment. They must be able to demonstrate sufficient maturity and intelligence to understand the nature and implications of the proposed treatment, including the risks and alternative courses of actions. In 1983, a judgment in the High Court laid down criteria for establishing whether a child had the capacity to provide valid consent to treatment in specified circumstances, irrespective of their age. Two years later, these criteria were approved in the House of Lords and became widely acknowledged as the Gillick test. The Gillick Test was named after a mother who had challenged health service guidance that would have allowed her daughters aged under 16 to receive confidential contraceptive advice without her knowledge.
As one of the Law Lords responsible for the Gillick judgment, Lord Fraser specifically addressed the dilemma of providing contraceptive advice to girls without the knowledge of their parents. He was particularly concerned with the welfare of girls who would not abstain from intercourse whether they were given contraception or not. The summary of his judgment referring to the provision of contraceptive advice was presented as the ‘Fraser guidelines’. Fraser guidelines are narrower than Gillick competencies and relate specifically contraception.
