DH accepts Field info plans

The long-awaited NHS information strategy will be released by April this year and will contain a timetable and guidance for GP practices to give patients access to their online records.

The Department of Health’s response to the latest report from the NHS Future Forum, which was published this morning, says the forum’s recommendations will be taken forward in the information strategy, to be published by April 2012.

It also says the strategy will include details on a timetable for patient records access, while the NHS Choices website will publish an interactive map of which GP practices are already giving patients access to their records.

The response picks up on a key recommendation of the NHS Future Forum’s second interim report, which calls for action to give substance to the government’s Autumn Statement commitment to give patients access to their records by 2015.

The forum’s chair, Professor Steve Field, told eHealth Insider today that this was an essential part of patients taking more responsibility for their own care.

He said it was very clear from the forum’s engagement with thousands of NHS users that patients did not feel they owned their own medical records and that many found it difficult or costly to access them.

In contrast, he argued that patients at practices that offer online records access feel much more in control of their health and care.

“In many cases, GP practices are ready to make records available to patients now. The information strategy will set out steps designed to ensure that all practices are able to fulfil the commitment,” the DH response says.

“The government acknowledges the forum’s further point that appropriate support structures and appropriate consent processes will be needed for patients so that they understand and know how to use the information within their own records, and will set out more detail in the information strategy.”

The DH response also touches on wider concerns in the NHS IT community about setting standards and making sure that systems are interoperable as the National Programme for IT in the NHS winds down.

It says the information strategy will emphasise the "important role of providers in making available information that integrates around the needs of the individual, and of commissioners in ensuring that this happens.

“We will reflect these roles and set out more detail in the forthcoming information strategy,” it says.

Field’s report recommends full electronic data sharing against set standards for all organisations delivering care in the NHS, or in adult and children’s social care, with no opt-out.

It also recommends that the information strategy should set out how the government will ensure the establishment of technical interoperability standards and common standards for the structure and content of health records.

The DH response agrees that standards are needed to enable IT systems to talk to each other.

“The Health and Social Care Bill contains provisions designed to enable those standards to be set and used across the health and care system, and the government will set out next steps for achieving the recommendations on standards in the information strategy,” it explains.

The government also agrees with the forum’s recommendation that hospital discharge summaries should be made available to the GP and patient at the point of discharge and that GP referral letters should be made available at the point of referral.

“We support this view and agree that the NHS number is an important tool in improving the way that information is used and accessed across health and social care. We intend for this aspiration to become a reality by 2013,” it says.

Field told EHI that giving patients access to their online GP record should be a building block towards giving access to their entire health record, eventually linking with secondary and social care.

The NHS Future Forum was initially set up to conduct a ‘listening exercise’ on the government’s ‘Liberating the NHS’ reforms, but opted to do more work on integrated care, training and education, and information.

The government ran an ‘Information Revolution’ consultation on a new information strategy for the NHS at the end of 2010; but the strategy itself failed to appear last year.