NHS services online

Think you can’t get the NHS online? Think again.
What NHS health care options are available online?

More than you might think. Nearly all GP practices now let you book GP appointments, order repeat prescriptions and access a summary of your medical record online.

The NHS’s ambition is that by 2018 every citizen will be able to access their full health records at the click of a button: every GP visit, every hospital visit, every prescription, every test and details of adverse reactions and allergies.

How can I use these services?

Talk your GP practice. Generally, you will need to fill in a short form and bring proof of your identity into your GP surgery so that they can provide you with logon details and with a password.

I’m a bit worried about my records being online

The NHS promise that only you will be given access to your record. They say: ‘When you sign-up to Patient Online, you will be given a secure login and a password. These details are unique to you and, along with your personal information, will not be shared with anybody else unless you choose to let them see it. This is not different to how you would access other online services, for example banking.’

Your patient information is stored on the IT system at your general practice and of course in the traditional, paper records.

You should never be forced to give access to anyone else but you might choose to let a carer access your records, for example. GPs will look at each request for access to a record and do everything they can to make sure they are genuine and not being made under pressure. They are able to refuse or withdraw access to a record if they have concerns.

What about finding where local NHS services are?

There are number of places you can do that. Our favourite is our Man MOT service. You can look up services or, even better, text chat or email our NHS GPs. 

There's more information about all NHS services online at NHS Patient Online.

There are also commercial sites such as Zesty offering to find local health professionals and even book you in.

The Men’s Health Forum need your support

It’s tough for men to ask for help but if you don’t ask when you need it, things generally only get worse. So we’re asking.

In the UK, one man in five dies before the age of 65. If we had health policies and services that better reflected the needs of the whole population, it might not be like that. But it is. Policies and services and indeed men have been like this for a long time and they don’t change overnight just because we want them to.

It’s true that the UK’s men don’t have it bad compared to some other groups. We’re not asking you to ‘feel sorry’ for men or put them first. We’re talking here about something more complicated, something that falls outside the traditional charity fund-raising model of ‘doing something for those less fortunate than ourselves’. That model raises money but it seldom changes much. We’re talking about changing the way we look at the world. There is nothing inevitable about premature male death. Services accessible to all, a population better informed. These would benefit everyone - rich and poor, young and old, male and female - and that’s what we’re campaigning for.

We’re not asking you to look at images of pity, we’re just asking you to look around at the society you live in, at the men you know and at the families with sons, fathers and grandads missing.

Here’s our fund-raising page - please chip in if you can.

Registered with the Fundraising Regulator