MPs call for pharmacists to have access to CRS

Pharmacists in primary and secondary care must be given read-write access to the NHS Care Records Service (NCRS), according to a report from MPs.

The All-Party Pharmacy Group’s (APPG) report on the Future of Pharmacy argues that pharmacy needs access to the NCRS to realise its potential as a health service provider and criticises Connecting for Health (CfH) over lack of consultation with pharmacists

The report states: “We do not believe that CfH has engaged adequately with the profession or its representative bodies and we are concerned that pharmacy is not being regarded by CfH as an essential participant in the NHS’s IT connectivity programme.”

The report’s eight recommendations on IT include:

• Pharmacists in both primary and secondary care must be given role-based, read-write access to patient’s Care Records as well as the NHS Spine

• Pharmacists must also be given the ability to make entries on the records if they are to provide maximum support to patients and the winder healthcare network

• NHS Connecting for Health muse hold more extensive consultations to engage pharmacy

• There must be clear communication to the public to explain which healthcare professionals have access to their Care Record and the reasons behind this access, to allow an informed debate.

Dr Howard Stoate MP, chairman of the APPG and a former GP, said almost all those who gave evidence to the APPG were in favour of pharmacy access to the NCRS.

He told EHI Primary Care: “It’s absolutely essential – GPs and pharmacists can’t share care of patients if neither knows what the other has done.”

The report says the British Medical Association told the APPG inquiry that it questioned how much of the record pharmacists should be able to access and had concerns about pharmacy’s ability to protect patient confidentiality, particularly within a commercial environment.

The MPs says they were unconvinced by those concerns. The report adds: “Confidentiality is an issue for all those health professionals accessing the Care Record. We do not see it as a greater challenge for pharmacies than it is for GP surgeries and we see no reason why effective protocols cannot be implemented by pharmacists to ensure that patients are reassured that information is accessed appropriately.”

Dr Stoate said he had already spoken Department of Health (DH) officials and DH ministers about the report and the government had promised that it would respond to the recommendations when it had had time to consider them.

The report says that Jeanette Howe, head of pharmacy at the DH, confirmed to the APPG that the DH was committed to connecting pharmacy to the NHS in an appropriate role-based manner.

The APPG report claims that consultation and engagement with pharmacists by CfH has been disappointing and h focused largely on the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) while largely ignoring wider connectivity issues and the Care Record.

The report adds: “We were surprised and concerned to hear that stakeholders not involved in the consultation process included multiple pharmacy chains, independent local pharmacies, local pharmaceutical committees and pharmacy system suppliers.”

The report claims progress on EPS has been “slow and erratic” and says CfH’s original target that EPS would be fully operational by the end of 2007 is unlikely to be met.

The MPs argue that there is also an urgent need for a structured and unstructured message exchange facility between pharmacists and GPs and other primary care professionals and that the NHS should provide support, guidance and training to pharmacists on IT, particularly for independent pharmacies and small multiples where there is no central IT function. They say the costs of NHS IT implementation should be shared by pharmacy and the NHS but with a significant majority of the cost being met by the NHS.

Dr Stoate told EHI Primary Care: “We felt that everything was taking too long and was too patchy with not enough uniformity. I’m pretty sure everything will happen but I want it to be sooner rather than later . We need everyone to up their game to make it happen much more quickly.”

Link

The All-Party Pharmacy Group’s (APPG) report on the Future of Pharmacy