100 practices to rollout patient access on the net

Patient access to medical records over the internet is to be rolled out to 100 practices.

Hadfield Medical Centre in Glossop, Derbyshire, was the first GP practice to enable to a patient to view their medical record over the internet just under a year ago  and since then eight other practices have joined the project.

Now GP computer supplier EMIS and GP-run company PAERS (Patient Access to Electronic Records Systems), who jointly run the scheme, hopes to extend the system to 100 practices.

Sean Riddell, managing director of EMIS, said that of the nine practices offering patient access to records the top practice was currently logging about 330 medical records viewed per month.

He told EHI Primary Care: “The next stage is to increase the number of practices wishing to participate up to about 100 and for them to recruit patients in to the project.”

Riddell said the development of patient access was an iterative process which was looking carefully at potential issues with patient access such as patients viewing test results before they had been discussed with the doctor and potential access to third party data.

He added: “Patient access is relatively low volume at the moment and we are looking closely at what the possible negative impacts of access to records might be on patient care so we can try and design those impacts out of the system.”

Dr Amir Hannan, a GP at the Haughton Thornley Medical Centre in Hyde, Cheshire, was one of the first practices to take part in the project and currently has 150 patients who are able to look at their medical records over the internet. He welcomed the plan to extend the initiative to 100 practices.

He said: “You can’t cut corners and you have to do something like this slowly although I have to say we started in about June or July last year and I have patients who are actively and regularly checking their records and I haven’t had a single problem.”

However Dr Hannan emphasised that enabling patients to access their records created a whole range of issues which needed to be tackled including the impact on patients with mental health problems, access for children, viewing test results before discussion with a doctor and access to third party data.

He added: “IT is not the issue. We have the technology but there is a whole bucketful of issues that need to be addressed.”

He credited the success of his project with the existence of a local care record development board set up by Tameside and Glossop PCT and containing representatives from secondary care, primary care, patients, information governance experts and social services.

He added: “The local care record board is absolutely brilliant. If there is an issue, such as should a 15 year old have access to their record, they can thrash it out. I don’t think they exist anywhere else in the country but as far as I am concerned that is absolutely the way forward.”

Dr Hannan recruited his initial 150 patients by running meetings at which he spent two hours covering the issues patients needed to be aware of and the potential pitfalls before signing up patients to the scheme.

Since Christmas he has created a 15 chapter DVD which covers what he believes are all the issues involved and which he intends to make available to all his patients interested in patient access. Those who have seen the DVD are then asked to complete a simple questionnaire, designed to check that they have viewed and understood the issues, before they are signed up to the project. Dr Hannan hopes to upload the DVD to YouTube so that patients and practices anywhere in the country can use it as part of their recruitment process.

Dr Hannan added: “NHS Direct is recording 1.5 million hits a month. There are a lot of people out there who want to know more about their health. I hope people realise that I am not a complete maverick and that we can do this safely and in a controlled manner.”

The EMIS project is part of the Records Access Collaborative, a group set up to raise awareness of patient record access both nationally and internationally .

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