‘Unworkable’ NCRS user policy to be replaced

The user policy for the NHS Care Records Service that practices were required to sign up to when they received a smartcard has been scrapped and is to be replaced with a new system.

Connecting for Health agreed last year to rewrite the Acceptable User Policy (AUP) in conjunction with GP representatives after it emerged that the policy was unworkable in general practice, but a decision has been made to replace the policy altogether.

Ewan Davis, chairman of the British Computer Society’s Primary Health Care Specialist Group (PHCSG), said his understanding was that the documentation surrounding use of the NHS Care Records Service (NCRS) was to be completely restructured.

Davis, who is taking the lead role on the issue for the joint RCGP/GPC IT committee, said he believed the existing two or three documents which related to approval to access the NCRS would be narrowed down to one or two.

The original RA01 form, that all practices are asked to sign when they receive a smartcard, included acceptance of the AUP which specified unworkable requirements not to use non-NHS IT equipment as well as placing untenable information governance requirements on practices. The RA01 form is now expected to be rewritten and some of the relevant requirements from the AUP placed into another document.

Davis told EHI Primary Care: "It’s a question of removing the stuff that’s not relevant to practices while still identifying the things that practices should be doing in terms of information governance."

Dr Mary Hawking, a GP in Bedfordshire and member of the PHCSG, who originally raised concerns about the AUP, said she had had a successful meeting with Philip Brown, the new senior responsible officer for the Registration Authority.

She told EHI Primary Care: "I was impressed with the people and how seriously and constructively the problem was being taken, which is a big step forward."

However Dr Hawking said she still had concerns over which level of organisation, either practice or PCT, would be responsible for some of the information governance requirements.

She added: "Practices like mine would be extremely unhappy about having to get every piece of software checked out before we could use it but in other practices they might not have the same level of experience in these issues."

Davis said the old AUP had been removed from NHSnet but it was unclear whether reference to the AUP was still being included in RA01 forms while the new documents were drafted.

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‘Unworkable’ smartcard rules to be rewritten