Derbyshire GPs say information poor on system choice

GPs in Derbyshire whose practices have switched to the GP clinical system TPP offered by their local service provider (LSP) have claimed they were not well informed about available choices for system change.

In a survey carried out by Derbyshire Local Medical Committee information about system choice scored worst out of the ten areas covered by the questionnaire. In better news for the LSP and primary care trust (PCT), most practices reported positively about the data migration process, which received the highest score from GPs followed by PCT informatics support during the switch to TPP.

Dr Peter Short, deputy chairman of Derbyshire LMC, said the LMC had decided to run the survey in November last year at a time when 38 practices had either switched to TPP or were in the process of going live.

He told EHI Primary Care: “We wanted to provide information for our colleagues about what was working well and what wasn’t and to share than with practices and the local primary care trusts.”

Dr Short claimed those practices who moved to TPP were not offered a choice by the PCTs as the LSP-funded system was free to the trusts while other systems would have to be paid for out of PCT budgets.

He added: “There was an incredible push to get people off the non-LSP systems and at that time GP Systems of Choice was hanging a bit in the balance.”

The LMC survey asked practices to rate ten different aspects of the move to TPP on a scale from one to five where five is excellent and one is unacceptable. Out of 37 practices who replied to the question on how well informed they felt about available choices for system change, more than 50% (23 GPs) were unhappy.

Dr Short said: “The results on system choice are pretty disappointing. There is no-one for practices to go to to get information about system choice.”

On the success of data migration 22 out of 31 GPs were positive about the transfer of data from their old systems with 6 GPs rating it “excellent.”

Dr Short said that the other area of major concern that emerged from the survey was how well the data sharing and security implications of the TPP system was explained to practices with 18 out of 34 GPs reporting negatively.

Dr Short added: “TPP is a hosted system and the perception form the PCT is that if you can share data with community staff and child health it’s going to be wonderful but there are a lot of issues including who is going to be able to add data to the primary care record, who can then change that data and will it be accurate? This is not a specific TPP issue it’s just they are the first to be doing it.”

Dr Short said another tranche of practices were now in the process of moving to TPP in Derbyshire and that the LMC might repeat the survey and also consider running similar surveys when there were system moves involving other GP IT systems.