NHS England has warned that more than 1,000 practices have not yet checked lists of patients who may need treatment reviews after being given incorrect cardiovascular risk scores following a major IT bug.
NHS England director of general practice Dr Arvind Madan has contacted the GPC to warn that about half of the 2,500 SystmOne practices affected by the error have not yet accessed lists of affected patients.
The lists were sent to practices in May, and GPs were told it was their responsibility to contact and review any patients who may need to be put on statins, or cease treatment, as a result of the IT error.
Both NHS England and GPC are conducting reviews to determine how much practices should be recompensed due to the added workload.
The GPC has said it would be ‘difficult to defend’ practices who have not yet checked their affected patients.
In an email to LMCs last month, GPC clinical lead Dr Andrew Green said: ‘I have spoken today with Dr. Arvind Madan from NHS England, who is concerned that about half of practices affected by this issue have not accessed the lists NHSE has provided them of their affected patients.
‘I would agree with him that practices should be aware of who these patients are and that it would be difficult to defend a practice that had not done so.’
Dr Green’s email to LMCs included a workload survey, which the GPC will use to argue for recompense from SystmOne provider TPP.
NHS England also pledged to audit the workload burden of reviewing patients and re-consulting with those who need a change to their treatment.
Pulse revealed that hundreds of thousands of patients may have been inappropriately started on statins, or kept off the treatment, because of a bug with the QRISK2 tool in SystmOne that dated back to 2009.
As a result, the DH stepped in to prevent NHS organisations and arms lengths bodies negotiating new contracts with TPP, with NHS England later confirming that 260,000 patients were affected.
NHS England said that an average practice would have 100 patients affected, though most of these would not need further action after they were reviewed.
It has already set out how practices should review these patients.
