Informatics Planning Guidance for primary care

Local health communities must fix a two-year timeline for the full roll-out of the NHS Summary Care Record and move to National Programme for IT in the NHS solutions for community services, the government has said.

Informatics Planning Guidance issued today alongside the Operating Framework for the NHS in England 2009-10 makes it clear that local NHS organisations will remain responsible for NHS IT, following the creation of the National Programme for IT Local Ownership Programme (NLOP) last year.

Primary care trust chief executives will be expected to lead local health informatics programmes and the Operating Framework says local informatics planning “will ensure that a systematic approach is deployed to identify costs and benefits and to ensure that benefits are achieved and evidenced.”

However, local health communities, led by PCTs, will also be expected to identify the informatics developments needed to deliver Lord Darzi’s Next Stage Review of the NHS, to meet information governance and quality requirements and to meet a set of national informatics expectations in 2009-10.

All NHS organisations will be required to achieve a minimum of level two performance against the key requirements in the NHS Information Governance Toolkit.

They will also be required to achieve complete adoption of the NHS Number, to improve the quality of demographic data and to have plans in place by June 2009 for pseudonymisation of patient data not used for direct care purposes, ready for the launch of a ‘full’ Secondary Uses Service.

Other specific measures include a commitment to roll-out the SCR within two years of GP systems in a PCT being compliant, and commitments on Release 2 of the Electronic Prescription Service, NHS Choices, GP Systems of Choice and GP2GP record transfer.

No mention is made of Detailed Care Records, except to restate the need for integrated information as outlined in the Health informatics Review.

However, the guidance does say that local health community plans will be expected to “demonstrate how community services will be supported in a more integrated way with primary care and other local services.”

PCTs will be expected to develop clear plans to identify ways of improving their local systems, including migration to NPfIT community solutions.

Local health communities are expected to submit initial informatics plans for at least three years by 30 January next year. These will be followed by a full submission by 20 March 2009.

The composition of local health communities will be decided locally, but is expected to comprise natural groupings of PCTs, trusts and other NHS organisations already working together.

The guidance says that national roll-out of the SCR “will have commenced” in 2008-09 and that strategic health authorities will agree a timeline for implementing the SCR with PCTs as commissioners. “Roll-out will be based on a two year window for the full deployment of SCRs from the date on which all GP systems in the PCT are compliant.”

On EPS Release 2, the guidance says PCTs will need to identify when they want to start deploying the live service. PCTs need to be included in statutory directions before they can go live with Release 2, with the first 17 PCTs named last week.

PCTs are also expected to promote awareness of NHS Choices, publish analysis of patient reported outcome measures (PROMS) on NHS Choices, and publish responses of what they have done in response to patient feedback.

GP2GP record transfer is currently only available via two suppliers, EMIS and INPS, but the guidance says developments in supplier products will enable more record transfers in 2009-10. It states that PCTs should deploy GP2GP to all eligible practices as suppliers deliver new implementations of GP2GP.

PCTs are also expected to comply with the PCT-practice agreement under GP Systems of Choice, as yet un-signed by many GP practices, and to ensure the upgrade and continued maintenance of IT assets in line with the GP IT Infrastructure Specification.

Links

Informatics Planning Guidance 2009-10

Operating Framework for the NHS in England 2009-10