GLOBE report about a proposed health helpline run by a private company with access to your medical records provoked a massive response last week.

Many readers were furious with Wirral Primary Care Trust’s decision to automatically sign patients up to the scheme - informing them by postcard that they had just two weeks to opt out.

But we were also contacted by several GP practices saying they had in fact already opted out of the scheme on their patients’ behalf - although some of their patients still received the postcards from the PCT anyway.

The scheme - Wirral Keep Well - is designed to provide additional telephone support for patients from registered nurses and “health professionals” in a bid to cut hospital admissions.

It’s now understood the cost to the PCT for the service run by Bupa-owned Health Dialog is £9.60 for every patient - or a possible £3.1million if everyone registered with a GP on Wirral was taking part.

Health Dialog is based in Boston, Massachusetts, where it was founded in 1997. It will operate its UK call centre from Cambridge. The PCT says it decided on the “opt out” method for enrolling patients in a bid to “maximise the number of patients who can benefit from this new scheme”.

But our report nevertheless saw surgeries throughout Wirral being inundated from patients concerned about where their information was going, why they hadn’t been asked first, and demands to be opted out.

Reader Jan Peddie emailed us saying “I do not want my personal data shared with anyone”, adding: “I should not have to write a letter to my doctor’s practice to stop this.This is an invasion of privacy which should not be going ahead unchecked.”

Another reader, Alan Dyer from Heswall, said: “Who the hell do the PCT think they are and where do they think they get the authority to disclose personal information without the express permission of the individuals concerned?

“It strikes me that the PCT is just another quango designed to employ the unemployable at exorbitant wages, to come up with ill thought out, tinpot ideas, to justify their existence.”

Yet another reader, from Claughton, wrote: “Apart from the fact that centralisation of such information is subject to misappropriation, sold, hired or by other means displayed to ‘private healthcare agencies’, such information is also subject to loss and other abuse, as has been seen very recently from other Government agencies.”

The Globe has however been contacted by several practices in different parts of Wirral to inform us they have already opted out their patients from the Wirral Keep Well scheme.

Among them was Peta Murphy from Upton Group Practice, who said: “A number of GP practices did not sign up to this initiative and therefore patients registered with those practices need have no concerns that their data will be released to Health Dialog.”

But Dr Mohammed Salahuddin, from Gladstone Medical Centre, another practice that is not part of the Wirral Keep Well scheme, said however: “Indeed we know that our patients have been sent this letter but on our objection we believe a further letter is going out to them apologising for the mistake made by Health Dialog.”