GPs to blame for care record inaccuracies, NHS IT chiefs claim

A recent audit found that it can take months for acute trusts to send GPs letters detailing changes in management / medication and many items are still virtually illegible. If Acute Trusts dont start sending legible data in real time, it is a bit rich blaming GPs for incomplete records. I think that SCR is nice in theory but the practicalities of wading though reams of detail may result in A&E realising in time that they have baked their own goose by forcing this through on the back of shroudwaving. Lets get down to the real issues - delayed letters delay care. Trusts should put their own house in order first and they have a long way to go...

If, as the Department of Health claims, GP summaries are to blame for inaccurate or incomplete information within Summary Care Records then that is all the more reason for this programme to require the explicit consent of patients - an opt in. Patients who give their explicit consent would know that they have the right to check the completeness and accuracy of GP-held summary information before upload to the SCR. The GP would then have confidence that their records were as accurate as possible and that their patient was fully aware of, and was happy with, the information that would be initially uploaded.

Yeah - Really Lets us have some examples please from CfH and the error rate please on audit. Lets have facts not smokescreens!

My PCT 'rolled out' the scheme early simply because cfh paid for the stamps. You couldn't make it up!!!!

Not so very long ago, GP and Hospital records were best guess, hand-written, aide-memoires. Transforming them into a fully computerized, contributed to by everyone, totally transparent, absolutely accurate encyclopaedia of documents for 60+ million people is not a straightforward task. Of course it takes a lot of time and effort, and that competes for time with everything else a GP is supposed to be prioritising. Blaming people for imperfect records collected over a lifetime is infantile.

In Cambridgeshire like Lancaster it would seem the only reason the PCT is rushing it through is money was offered for the publicity costs... Secondary care and OOH here have not got systems in place to access the SCR as yet and won't have for sometime as yet... We as a practice have opted out at this stage for this reason as there is little benefit to the patient but all the data storage risks.

And every word that proceeds from Connecting for Health is gospel truth?

Surely the message in A&E is that there is no substitute for listening to patients. The theory behind Summary Care Records may be great but history tells us that government IT projects do not deliver. Why do we continue to waste money on them when we need to contain costs?

Next the GPs will be blamed for giving the MPs a 1.5% raise while restricting their own uplift to a mere 0.8%. Tell me when to stop laughing! Ha! Ha!! Ha!!!!!!

I have never claimed to hold the perfect record, my own contain working diagnosis evolved into correct ones by the passage of time. The mobility of GP patients means 'working diagnosis' may become a coding 'fact' whilst the new GP pursues another diagnosis for the same set of symptoms.

The 'Penicillin Allergy' codes are a case in point. Patients arriving with a history of penicillin allergy in the last few years when reviewed often give a hx of rash after penicillin for symptoms I would call a viral URTI (and the rash was probably viral)- but those over that time and the patient unable to describe the event I have to take as allergy.

Let us remember the record was evolved for one purpose and is now being put to another. It's a bit like asking a military tank to swim. It can be made to do so, but you would not regard it as an effective watercraft which you would choose to cruise in.

Whilst I accept the data resided in GP notes was sincerely held to be correct and that Connecting for Health are correct that is where they OBTAINED it from, as many contributors point out it does not mean that the GP holding the record made 'the error'. No notes in any format can substitute for a contemporaneous hx of presenting complaint, antecedants to the current issue and due medical diligence in a personal assessment of the patient.