SCR uploads to continue during review

Summary Care Records will continue to be created and uploaded to the Spine while the programme is under review but no new patient information campaigns will be launched, EHI Primary Care can reveal.

Health minister Simon Burns told the BMA last week that a review would be carried out of the information patients receive on the SCR and the opt-out process as well as a review of the content of the record.

A DH spokesperson told EHI Primary Care: “Records will continue to be created where GP practices and primary care trusts are satisfied that patients have been adequately informed about the records and enabled to opt out if they wish to do so. This will be decided at local level.

“New mailings of letters informing patients about the Summary Care Record will be paused while the review is underway.”

The DH said 1.7 million records have now been created and 29.8 million patients contacted. That means that all of those contacted could now have a SCR created, subject to the 12 week minimum consultation period and the agreement of GP practices and PCTs.

The DH told EHI Primary Care that the number of records that would be created over the next three months would be determined at local level by GP practices and PCTs.

The spokesperson said the DH was in the process of agreeing the timing and detail of the review of use of IT in the NHS, promised by Simon Burns.

Prof Trisha Greenhalgh, lead author of the independent evaluation of the SCR published five days ago LINK, told E-Health Insider last week that it would be an “absolute disgrace”  if the government ignored the evaluation of the SCR. The evaluation found that there had been few benefits from the SCR programme so far.

Henry Potts, one of the authors of the SCR evaluation, told EHI primary Care that he hoped the lessons learned from the English experience would be taken on board in the US as it begins its to look at electronic records and that the ‘baby wasn’t thrown out with the bath water’ in England.

He added: “There are benefits to be realised here and just because it’s more difficult than was expected doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing.”