Cost of access to old records agreed

NHS Connecting for Health has set out the options GP practices have to access their old records if they switch to a different IT system.

The GP Systems of Choice team has agreed details of how each IT supplier will provide practices with access to their audit trail and the costs of doing so.

CfH says practices may need access to their audit trail in the event of a medico-legal challenge.

The three options offered to practices range from the most expensive one of retaining their existing GPSoC system with full support to retaining their system with reduced support or requesting ad hoc access to clinical data and the audit trail.

CfH says it plans to audit suppliers’ ability to provide data and audit trail retrieval services, but so far no suppliers have had their services independently validated.

EMIS and TPP will make no charge for up to two accesses per year with other suppliers making a one off charge of up to £1,536 (Microtest).

SystmOne users will be able to keep their existing systems for three months while most of the others will offer a perpetual annual licence or access as long as the media is readable.

The GPSoC team has also published de tails of the services each GPSoC supplier will supply in the event of a data migration. CfH says a data extract from the practice’s existing system will need to be carried out which can either be a back-up tape or a documented data extract from the system.

It says a documented data extract means the practice’s new supplier has information about how the data extracted from the practice’s existing system is structured, making them easier to translate the data into the practice’s new system correctly.