Scottish GPs say GPASS Clinical rollout too slow

The user group of the Scottish GP system GPASS is urging the Scottish Executive to speed up the rollout of the new version of GPASS which it says is desperately needed by GPs.

Dr Andrew McElhinney, chairman of the GPASS User Group, has told the Scottish Executive that GPs need GPASS Clinical now and that current rollout plans will not get the new interface into practices quickly enough.

The Executive has decided that GPASS Clinical will only be available via a central server and that there will be an initial implementation of thin client based, managed services for around 100 practices.

Dr McElhinney told EHI Primary Care that he believes only two sites have so far gone live. The user group has asked that the Scottish Executive adopts a target that 90 per cent of practices have access to GPASS Clinical by June next year. There are more than 800 practices using GPASS in Scotland.

Dr McElhinney said: “The Executive needs to make adequate resources available to make that happen or GPs will choose another system. If you look at the resources that they have in England for Connecting for Health then we should be investing on a comparable scale.”

Dr McElhinney said he feared greater priority was being given to other IT projects in Scotland, such as the electronic referrals project and the move to NHS Contact for email.

“This needs to be much higher in the priorities,” he added.

A survey carried out by the user group earlier this year, completed by 305 practices, found that 57% said they were unhappy with GPASS, and 45% said that given finance, they would be prepared to change system.

A new deal on system choice for Scottish GPs was made by the choice made by the Scottish Executive Health Department (SEHD) and the BMA’s Scottish General Practitioner Committee earlier this year. It means that GPs will be allowed to move systems providing that certain conditions are met including an agreement that any new system must use a central data server.

Dr McElhinney said the joint Royal College of General Practitioners’ and British Medical Association IT committee was also monitoring rollout plans for GPASS Clinical.

A Scottish Executive Spokesperson told EHI Primary Care that the rollout of GPASS Clinical is being managed by NHS National Services Scotland.

She added: "Testing of the system is at beta stage and after this it will be rolled out to an initial 100 practices. It is expected to be completed by autumn. No targets have yet been set beyond that."