By Andy McCue, 13 September 2007 14:29
NEWS
MPs have slammed the delays and lack of progress in rolling out a national system of electronic patient records, a key plank of the government's £12.4bn NHS IT project.
The NHS care records service will eventually consist of a national summary care record containing basic patient information which can be accessed in emergencies and a more detailed local care record containing more comprehensive clinical information for each patient.
Some pilots of the summary care record have now started but a report by the Health Select Committee found the scope, capability and timetable for the more detailed local record to be "vague and inconsistent".
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The MPs criticised Connecting for Health, the agency responsible for the National Programme for IT in the NHS (NPfIT), for a lack of local involvement in the care record project.
The report said: "Hospitals have often been left out of negotiations between Connecting for Health and its suppliers, and found themselves, as one witness put it, at 'the bottom of the food chain'."
The MPs said they are "dismayed" by the lack of clarity about what information will be held on the summary care record and what the record will be used for, and recommended the implementation of a single, standardised front-end screen to display key health information vital for emergency care.
Implementing a local detailed electronic care record is the "holy grail" for the NHS IT programme but the report said it is still not clear what information will be recorded and shared on the systems or which range of organisations will be able to share the information.
The only estimate for delivery of the local electronic patient record system is 2010, just for London, and the report said the shared records system "remains a distant prospect".
MPs blamed over-ambitious timescales that did not take sufficient account of the complexity of replacing existing systems and a failure to give hospitals responsibility for implementing their own systems.
Despite the problems the report said the local care records can improve safety and efficiency and "vastly increase" the effectiveness of clinical communication, adding that the overall success of the NPfIT should ultimately be judged on delivering this.
Earlier this week, a review of the 2002 Wanless report into the modernisation of the NHS called for an independent external audit of the NHS IT programme.
Comments
There are 2 comments. Join the discussion
1. anonymous
Having worked for one of the suppliers what the hospitals say is true. They are the last to be consulted they are provided with precious little information. It would seem that CfH just expect the hospitals to get on and do it.
However there another side to this CfH keep changing their minds on what and how things are done. They also fail to co-ordinate the activities of the various supplliers causing all sorts of grief.
In the main CfH is NOT FIT FOR PURPOSE!!
2. Brian Curnow
I watched in amusement the debate on BBC Parliament of the Select Committee investigating progress towards a National NHS Patient records system.
As someone who has worked on such Medical Record Keeping systems in the United States in the past I can sympathise with those trying to resolve the often conflicting interests of Government, Doctors and Patients.
MPs can't be expected to appreciate the complexity of developing such a system. To them it just appears as though it's a simple matter to order up such a system. It's not.
Doctors don't really understand the nature of the task from a technical perspective. In any case trying to get two doctors to agree on anything is difficult enough, let alone the entire profession.
Patients have other concerns mainly to do with understanding what is available and what to expect from such system. They need really only be concerned with their health and the quality of service they receive.
Success in trying to resolve these conflicting interests is obviously what has been lacking todate with this system.
I would therefore suggest going back to the drawingboard and redefining exactly what it is that Government is trying to achieve in commissioning this system.
The audit may progress the matter, but frankly it should be up to the Medical Profession to decide what the system should record and who should have access to the information - not Government or Patients.
Therefore if it were up to me I'd turn the responsibility over to the Medical Profession and get them to tell the developers exactly what they require. Until that is done there will inevitably be gaps in the functionality and utility of the solution delivered.