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Doctors have accused the Ministry of Health and district health boards of breaching patient confidentiality after they installed software that extracted personal data without the patients' permission.
The GP Leaders Forum yesterday wrote to the country's 3500 GPs advising them of what it regards as a serious breach of patient confidentiality.
It was also concerned that the ministry and DHBs went ahead to install software to extract patient data without discussing first with GPs what data would be taken.
"Patient confidentiality is our first and foremost concern - nothing that is identifiable should leave the practice without the practice and patient being aware of this, and giving consent," said Bev O'Keefe, chairwoman of the Independent Practitioner Associations Council, one of four GP bodies that signed the letter.
But the DHBs say the matter is a storm in a teacup as patient information - including names and details - has always been collected by Primary Health Organisations from GPs.
Chris Clarke, lead DHB chief executive for primary healthcare, said there was no "cunning plan".
"I think it's been a bit of a storm in a teacup. That's not to minimise GP concerns, and what we will do is we'll talk to them ... Clearly there's a communication issue, which we'll happily address."
The patient information is collected as part of the next phase of a PHO performance monitoring programme.
It reaches the PHOs, which plan for the healthcare of groups of people in the country, in a way that allows individual patients to be identified.
"It's information about the health of their population, and it's vitally important information, because what we're really wanting to know is what is the health of our community," said Mr Clarke.
But Dr O'Keefe says PHOs do not need personal patient data.
"There does appear to be a mentality at government level that it's okay for PHOs to have identifiable information. We're saying that it's not.
"You can plan for the health needs of the future without having to know that that was Joe Bloggs who lives next door who's got diabetes."
She said they met the ministry a week ago. It agreed to write to DHBs on the issue. Dr O'Keefe said those letters had not yet appeared.
