How PQIP Handles Your Personal Information

To help PQIP provide an in-depth picture of your care, we send your personal details (NHS number, date of birth and postcode) to NHS Digital (England), NHS Wales Informatic Service or NHS National Services Scotland, depending on where you live. This transfer of data is via a secure, trusted data linkage service that will link hospital admissions information (Hospital Episode Statistics - HES) to individual participants within the study. 

These organisations will link information to individual participants in the study, which will tell us if patients have (for example) been readmitted to hospital after going home.

NHS Digital, NHS Wales Informatic Service and NHS National Services Scotland will also link your identifiable data to civil registration data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which provides information regarding any deaths of participants occurring over the time of this research. 

NHS Digital, NHS Wales Informatic Service and NHS National Services Scotland will then return to us an extract of anonymised HES and ONS data which will only contain your unique PQIP study number. This file will not include any other identifiable data. We will then link the data received from these organisations to the information held by PQIP using your PQIP study number. This data linkage enables us to undertake long term follow-up of patients who take part in PQIP, and we will request information from NHS Digital over the next 30 years. 

You can learn more by reading PQIP's Privacy Notice.

You can decide to stop participating at any time – please contact a member of the research team at your local hospital or at the central PQIP Helpdesk.

You are free to choose not to participate in the study. If you decide not to take part in this study, there will be no penalty to you. Your care will not be affected either way.