Patient access to records ‘can bring benefits to PCTs’

Patient access to records can help primary care trusts meet their fitness for purpose targets, the Healthcare Computing conference heard.

Colin Cohen, head of informatics at Tameside and Glossop PCT which has been involved in pioneering work on record access, told the conference about the benefits of allowing patients to view their records.

He said: “Looking at what we aim to do over the next few years there will be much more focus on the PCT’s public health duties and improving life expectancy. We can only do that if the whole population are taking a more active role in their health.

“We also want to look at improving service quality but it will only have some effect if the people asked to get involved have access to information.”

Tameside and Glossop has set up a local care record development board to oversee its work on patient record access and to try to agree local policies on record sharing issues.

Cohen added: “In Greater Manchester we have the reference solution from our local service provider but we are still a very long way from integrated records so we wanted to see what we can do to achieve something positive right now.”

The board includes representatives form patient groups, carers, primary and secondary care clinicians, information governance experts and social services.

Cohen said one of the key issues for the board was how to bring in non-NHS partners such as those from the independent sector who he predicted would become increasingly involved as the NHS worked towards the 18 week target.

He added: “At the moment we haven’t got a practical way of sharing information with them.”

The local care record development board’s tasks include providing advice to the Thornley Medical Centre in Hyde where 170 patients currently look at their medical records over the internet.

Dr Amir Hannan, GP at the practice, told the conference that record access was improving the level of trust between patients and the health care system.

The challenges he identified for record access included the ability of the N3 connection to cope with increasing numbers of patients accessing their records, the difficulties of delivering record access to non–IT literate patients, and the lack of standards to govern patient record access.

He added: “The technological solutions are now live but there is no policy behind it.”

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