Scope of SCR reduced further

Plans to allow hospitals and patients to add to the Summary Care Record have been put on hold as the Department of Health seeks to rein in both the content of the record and who can view it.

A revised scope document for the SCR, published by NHS Connecting for Health, makes it clear that, for the moment at least, information will be limited to details uploaded from GP records.

It says the scope of the SCR needs to be clearly defined “to avoid scope creep, which has the potential to lead to unexpected consequences, clinical safety issues or additional costs.”

The document confirms the conclusion of the DH’s review of the content of the record that was published last October and which said initial content should be limited to details of a patient’s medications, allergies and adverse reactions.

The scope document says GPs can add additional information with the patient’s explicit consent, but qualifies this by saying it should only be information that will improve the quality of care provided by clinicians working out-of-hours or in an emergency care situation.

The DH has made it clear that it plans to limit access to urgent and emergency care settings and suspended a planned pilot of access in a community pharmacy, as EHI Primary Care revealed last month.

Two years ago, the DH was drawing up plans for ‘Release 2’ of the SCR. This would have involved staff in A&E departments and other NHS organisations entering data including discharge summarues, outpatient clinic letters and Common Assessment Framework documents.

The plan also included proposals to allow patients to enter their own data via the HealthSpace portal.

Last summer two hospitals, The Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, were planning to upload non-GP summary data.

However, both have now abandoned those plans. In November, the Information Commissioner’s Office was told that additional feeds from secondary care were on hold.

The DH is setting up a new body to make decisions about the clinical content of the record, as recommended by its review last year.

The scope document says the new body will be driven by patients and citizens in partnership with the professions. The chair, membership and terms of reference for the body were due to be in place by early 2011.

A Department of Health spokesperson told EHI Primary Care: "The review recommended that we should only consider expanding the content of the Summary Care Record when we have built trust in the system, when patients request that we do so, and when the new governance arrangements should be established for [its] content.

"It is expected that the new arrangements will be in place later in 2011."