New contractual requirements came into force from 1 April 2014 requiring that GP Practices should make available a statement of intent in relation to the following IT developments:
- Electronic appointment booking
- Online repeat prescriptions
- Patient access to their GP record
Please find below details of the practice’s stance with regards to these points.
Electronic appointment booking
Our computer supplier EMIS LV has not yet made our system compliant for you to book your appointments on line. However from December 2014 we will be changing our clinical system to EMIS Web, which will allow us to enable our patients to book appointments on line from 31st March 2015.
Online repeat prescriptions
We currently offer the facility for ordering your repeat prescriptions on-line. If you do not already have a user name and password for this system – please ask reception for more details.
Patient Online Access to OWN GP Record
NHS England require practices to promote and offer the facility to enable patients online access to appointments, prescriptions, allergies and adverse reactions or have published plans in place to achieve this by 31st of March 2015.
However, our computer supplier EMIS LV has not yet made our system compliant for you to access information online from your medical record. However from December 2014 we will be changing our clinical system to EMIS Web, which will allow us to enable our patients to access their records as above from 31st March 2015.
It is also a core contractual requirement for all GP Practices to utilise the following clinical system functions by 31st March 2015:
- Summary care record updates
- Electronic transfer of patient records (GP2GP)
Summary Care Record (SCR)
NHS England require practices to enable successful automated uploads of any changes to patient’s summary information, at least on a daily basis, to the summary care record (SCR) or have published plans in place to achieve this by 31st of March 2015.
Having your Summary Care Record (SCR) available will help anyone treating you without your full medical record. They will have access to information about any medication you may be taking and any drugs that you have a recorded allergy or sensitivity to.
The core SCR record contains medications, allergies and adverse reactions and uploaded on the basis of implied patient consent. Additional information can only be uploaded with explicit patient consent and should be information required to support patient care in an emergency or urgent situation.
The SCR should only be viewed in emergency or urgent care settings with the explicit consent of the patient unless the patient is unable to give their consent (for example a patient is unconscious).
Of course if you do not want your medical records to be available in this way then you will need to let us know so that we can update your record. You can do this by contacting the surgery and arranging to fill a form out.
Dial House Medical Centre confirms that your SCR is automatically updated on at least a daily basis to ensure that your information is as up to date as it can possibly be.
GP to GP Record Transfers
NHS England require practices to utilise the GP2GP facility for the transfer of patient records between practices, when a patient registers or de-registers (not for temporary registration).
It is very important that you are registered with a doctor at all times. If you leave your GP and register with a new GP, your medical records will be removed from your previous doctor and forwarded on to your new GP via NHS England. It can take your paper records up to two weeks to reach your new surgery.
With GP to GP record transfers your electronic record is transferred to your new practice much sooner.
Dial House Medical Centre confirms that GP to GP transfers are already active and we send and receive patient records via this system.
Gill Eggleston
Practice Manager
29 September 2014