Swindon GP suffers printing pile-up

Printing patient records with Emis Web is like throwing a deck of cards into the air and watching them land two hours later, Swindon GP has complained.

Dr Peter Crouch, a GP at Taw Hill Medical Practice in Swindon, said his surgery is unable to print its backlog of 400 patient records because of “major problems” with Emis Web.

He told EHI that the problem means it takes up to two hours to print one set of patient records. “Right now we have 400 patient records that we can’t print, and when it does print, it prints it out in random order,” he said.

Hence his comment that trying to print is like “throwing a pack of neatly ordered playing cards into the air and watching them land completely shuffled.”

“In this analogy, it takes up to two hours for the cards to land,” Dr Crouch added, saying practice staff members had to manually sort the records to make sure they were in right order.

“We used to be able to ask for a medical record printout and click one button. You put the kettle on and by the time you had returned with a steaming cuppa the notes would be in the printer bin – all in order – no sorting or checking required.”

The practice, which has a very high turnover of patients, needs to print out the records every time the patient switches surgery. “This printing delay delays the patients’ medical records going onto their new practice,” Dr Crouch said.

He added that he believed the problem was first reported in May 2013. “We have been told that it may take until sometime after April 2014 with release 4.3 to sort this.

“Emis are treating this as a project to enhance the printing capability, not as ‘a bug’ so it isn’t getting the priority associated with a bug fix,” he said.

An Emis customer service manager has been on site in the past week to help to address the problem. Dr Crouch said that in 14 hours, she had managed to print 50 sets of records, meaning it would take 98 hours to finish the full set of 400.

Speaking to EHI, Emis apologised to the GP practice. A spokesperson told EHI that the problem reported in May was a different one, but the company is working to solve the latest issue.

"Emis resolved a printing issue for this practice in May 2013. They contacted us about a different printing issue in October 2013,” said the spokesperson.

The spokesperson added that a “fix” went into the practice’s Emis Web system on Friday. “The issue they have experienced is an unusual one,” they added.

“It affects a small number of practices using a certain combination of printers and printer software to print off medical records. We are sorry for the disruption the practice has experienced,” said the spokesperson.

Dr Geoff Schrecker, co-chair of the Emis National User Group and chair of its “watchdog” subcommittee said he was unaware of the problem and had not heard of other practices having the same issues. However, he said he would follow up through the committee.