CfH looking for PCTs to trial summary record

NHS Connecting for Health is looking for primary care trusts to become early adopters for the NHS Care Records Service summary record.

The agency wrote to all PCTs last week seeking expressions of interest to be early adopter sites, which it says will assess “several key concepts” associated with the summary record. These include the implied consent model and the clinical benefit of the summary record in an unscheduled care environment.

CfH says the early adopter implementation will be limited to a “small number” of health communities and will also look at provision and upload of the general practice element of the summary record, the use of HealthSpace for patients to access their record and the deployment processes. An evaluation is to be conducted by an external organisation.

In the letter Richard Jeavons, director of implementation for CfH, said preparations for implementation of the early adopter sites had already begun with live running planned for early 2007.

He told PCT chief executives: “The PCTs taking part will be able to provide input directly into the early adopter programme and influence the national roll out of the Summary Record scheduled to commence early in 2008.”

His letter states that the early adopter sites will focus on the GP element of the NHS Summary record “enabling it to be shared with appropriate health professionals within the PCT area.”

The latest plan put forward by CfH earlier this year is that initially only allergy and prescription information will be uploaded as freetext to the spine, on an opt out basis, with additional information such as major diagnoses and procedures uploaded as a coded summary once patient consent has been received.

CfH said PCTs would be selected to take part in the early adopter programme based on the following criteria:

• Close to 60% of the population of each PCT will be covered by one GP system provider;
• The population covered by the GP system provider will not exceed half a million patients;
• The population within the PCT will be of a relatively geographically stable nature;
• The deployment of Choose and Book and/or the Electronic Prescription Service will have reached 50% of the GP practices across the PCT;
• Key data quality initiatives are already in place across the GP practices, these could include PRIMIS initiatives and/or preparation for the Information Management and Technology Direct Enhanced Service initiative;
• The availability of unscheduled care will be within the boundaries of the PCT.

The letter says PCTs chosen to take part in the early adopter programme will benefit from direct support from CfH to improve GP practice data quality, support from CfH to work with the GP system provider to ensure the solution and training provided meets the needs of the clinicians involved and support from CfH to ensure patients are informed about the NCRS.

Expressions of interest need to be sent to CfH by 1 September and CfH also plans to approach system suppliers with the agreed PCT coverage to ensure they are able to support the early adopter programme.

In June health minister Lord Warner announced the establishment of a taskforce to speed up implementation of the NCRS and promised that a date for the start of the summary record early adopter sites in early 2007 would be announced soon.

The taskforce is charged with producing a detailed implementation plan by the end of this year on how delivery of the NCRS can be speeded up.

Documents

Richard Jeavons’ letter on the early adopter programme

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