GPs warn of ‘unacceptable delays’ as patient death notifications ‘lost’ in IT update
Exclusive GPs in one area were not notified of patient deaths for days due to a faulty software update, which caused ‘inacceptable’ delays for patients and ‘weeks of chaos’ for practices.
GPs in the Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucester area told Pulse that a faulty update to the Docman software meant that important patient information was delayed or missed altogether, as practices mistakenly received hundreds of duplicate emails.
Pulse understands that the issue with the document management system, which is meant to ‘bridge the gaps between primary and secondary care’, caused delays and medicolegal worries for practices, including delayed notifications of death, delayed reports and delayed requests for palliative care medication prescriptions.
According to its website, the Docman software, owned by provider OneAdvanced, supports over 4,000 GP surgeries across the UK.
One GP in South Gloucestershire told Pulse that the disruption lasted for about a month, and that while the issue seemed to have been resolved, their practice had about 1,000 documents to go through, amid worries that important information could have been missed.
The GP said: ‘I think in two patients who died, and who we were required to do the death certificates of, we didn’t know they had died because the notifications were lost in the system.
‘It meant that a delay of two days for their family, they died on Thursday, we didn’t find out till like Monday – an additional delay, which is not really very acceptable.’
They added that the issue meant overtime for practice staff, with one GP having to spend about 20 hours each week going through the documents.
The GP said: ‘We’ve still probably got about 1,000 documents in a sort of quarantine area, we don’t know whether they are duplicates or not, and I’m really worried that we might have missed something.
‘We’ve had to adjust workflows to double check things haven’t already been seen and actioned, because we just don’t know.
‘If they’re all duplicates, it’s just a waste of time. And if some of them aren’t, then there could be something buried in there that’s important, and that we’ve missed.’
OneAdvanced currently holds a £86,000 annual contract for Docman with the ICB, which is meant to expire at the end of this year, according to data released as part of an FOI request.
The ICB told Pulse that this was not a specific issue for their area but that it was a national problem with the software. However, Docman failed to confirm to Pulse how many practices were affected.
Docman confirmed to Pulse that a software update released on 2 February ‘unexpectedly led to an administrative mail processing issue’, but said that this only affected ‘a small number of practices’.
A spokesperson for Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire ICB, said: ‘We understand the frustration this issue is causing for GP practices and are working closely local partners to support those affected in our area to help reduce any additional pressure on them.
‘We have shared our concerns with Docman and hope a solution will be in place soon.’
Scott Taylor, VP of customer operations at OneAdvanced, said: ‘A software update released on 2 February, designed to improve message handling reliability, unexpectedly led to an administrative mail processing issue for a small number of practices receiving documents via NHSmail.
‘The majority of practices use our structured Clinical Document Transfer (Docman Connect) service, which continued to operate normally.
‘All customers impacted were kept informed with regular “in-app” updates until the issue was resolved.
‘We recognise the significant pressures GP teams face and appreciate their patience and cooperation whilst we worked to resolve the issue.’
Pulse has contacted NHS England for comment.
In 2018, Pulse reported that a glitch within Docman resulted in documents being left out from patient records, with warning from NHS England and the BMA that this could put patients at risk.
