Primary care order comms pilots announced

Two pilot sites have been named as part of the primary care order communications project, which is developing the electronic ordering of pathology tests and the reporting of test results in primary care.

Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust’s pathology service will work with the Park Road Medical Centre, Wallington. In addition, the pathology services of Frimley Park NHS Foundation Trust and Royal Surrey County Hospital NHS Trust will work with the Bridge Practice, Chertsey.

The pilot with the early adopters is expected to run until autumn 2008 and the project is being delivered by the NHS CFH Care Records Systems implementation team.

The aim is to work with two GP practice system suppliers and two laboratory IT system suppliers, in order to upgrade their systems to be able to send and receive electronic pathology requests and results messages.

The new pilots will see the introduction of the national pathology messaging standard – part of the pathology messaging implementation project (PMIP).

PMIP covers the information content, structure, management and security of electronic pathology report messaging between laboratories and GPs.

Using PMIP files results can be sent directly into the patient record, and with the introduction of pathology messaging standards for electronic requests, CfH hopes that this will improve the quality of patient demographics data received in the pathology laboratory significantly.

Anticipated benefits to GPs and patients should include faster pathology result reporting, improved data quality and integration into GP clinical systems.

The introduction of primary care order communications should also improve governance of the whole process, fundamentally improving data quality and reducing the risk of loss or misfiling of pathology requests and reports.

One of the project’s additional aims will be to work out how best to deliver a national roll-out and introduce this new functionality using the Spine Messaging Service and the new pathology messaging standards.

The introduction of order communications into primary care project is an important step towards end-to-end IT connectivity, and was identified as a priority by the Independent Review of NHS Pathology Services in England, chaired by Lord Carter of Coles, published in August 2006. 

Expert advisers from the Royal College of Pathologists, the Royal College of General Practitioners and the British Medical Association are members of the project board, along with representatives from NHS Connecting for Health, the Pathology Modernisation Programme of the Department of Health and the Independent Review of Pathology.

Links

More information on early adopter sites