09 September 2009
Summary Care Record Roll-out Widening with SystmOne
TPP has completed accreditation and piloting of the NHS Summary Care Record (SCR) with SystmOne. The rollout to all 996 SystmOne GP practices has now begun.
TPP Clinical System Analyst, Stephen Tucker, says, "We have been working with NHS Connecting for Health on the Summary Care Record and are now able to work with NHS CFH, CSC and PCTs to enable roll-out across the SystmOne GP user base."
The Summary Care Record sends key health information about each consenting patient (for example, demographics plus current medication and any previous adverse reactions to medicines) to the Spine. From there, users of any other SCR-enabled clinical system can view these details in order to make better informed clinical decisions. GPs can also add other details from the full patient record to the SCR if they deem them to be clinically appropriate.
In future, users of other SystmOne modules such as Urgent Care will be able to receive SCRs from the Spine, meaning that if the patient they are caring for is not registered on SystmOne, they may still be able to access basic details about the patient from the Spine that have been uploaded from another GP software provider.
Following a public information programme to patients in their area, GP practices from Bradford and Airedale Teaching Primary Care Trust were the first to use SystmOne's Summary Care Records to support unscheduled and out of hours care.
The Ridge Medical Practice and Frizinghall Medical Centre in Bradford were the first to perform the 'Initial upload' to the Spine, so that their patients may now have a Summary Care Record held on the Spine and benefit from having a summary of their health information made available to health care staff treating them whenever it's needed. These practices have since been followed by other practices in Bradford & Airedale, South West Essex and Lincolnshire.
TPP has worked closely with NHS CFH, CSC and Yorkshire and the Humber SHA to successfully complete the pilot phase of this project. Phil Molyneux, Chief Information Officer at Yorkshire and the Humber SHA NPfIT, explains the importance of making data available at the point of care: "In Yorkshire and the Humber, we believe that clinicians in the front-line of the NHS should have complete, reliable and well-structuredrecords at their finger-tips at all times and in all settings. We believe that where technology is enabled, and where well-informed patients have given consent, clinical data should be shared between those clinicians with a legitimate caring relationship with the patient regardless of the type and location of the healthcare provider and across organisational boundaries. We believe that striving towards this ambitious goal has real potential to improve the safety and efficiency of the care provided and to significantly improve the patient's experience."
Phil goes on to explain how this vision is supported by both the Detailed Care Record, such as is made available through SystmOne, and the Summary Care Record: "We view the Summary Care Record as an extension and supplement to the Detailed Care Record that will primarily be used in situations or for patients where access to the Detailed Care Record is not available. In those situations we expect to see - as a result of the Summary Care Record being available to staff - more timely and informed clinical decisions, especially in urgent care settings, more 'joined up' healthcare delivery and greater involvement of patients in their care. For patient care in Yorkshire and the Humber, an important next step is the Summary Care Record Application (SCRa) Viewer, which would be integrated into SystmOne, and would allow urgent care settings already using SystmOne to view a non-SystmOne patient's Summary Care Record without having to log into a different system."
The work by TPP, Yorkshire and the Humber SHA, CSC and NHS CFH is now paving the way for rollout of the Summary Care Record for all users of SystmOne GP across England. Your PCT will be in contact with you when your practice is due to go live with the Summary Care Record, and the relevant training materials will be made available.
