Consent to view explored for detailed records

23 Sep 2008

The new consent to view model for the NHS Summary Care Record in England may also be applied to the detailed care records held by NHS organisations.

NHS Connecting for Health is to explore how the principle of 'consent to view' - announced as the new model for the SCR last week - could work when patients’ detailed care records are accessed.

Dr Gillian Braunold, clinical director for the SCR, said the consent to view principle was being explored for cases in which information generated and held by one organisation was made available to another. It would not apply to records generated and held within one organisation.

“The principle of whether or not you could bring in consent to view before you look at records, when you wouldn’t normally expect the information to be available, is what is being explored.”

South West Essex Primary Care Trust, the sixth early adopter site for the SCR, which has yet to go live, has already said that the consent model for detailed care records held by SystmOne must align with the consent to view model for the SCR.

Dr Braunold also told E-Health Insider and E-Health Insider Primary Care that she hoped the first hospitals would be able to upload discharge letters to the SCR at the end of the year. The software would include sealed envelope functionality to allow hospitals to withhold information that patients did not want uploaded.

CfH is also working with out-of-hours IT provider Adastra to enable information from out-of-hours encounters to be uploaded, she said.

The information uploaded to the Spine for the SCR from GP records will remain medicines and allergies. However, GPs will have discretion to add significant past medical history.

In the future, Dr Braunold said England hoped to follow Wales in introducing an ‘exclusion dataset’ that would mean particularly sensitive information, such as details on HIV, sexually transmitted diseases and terminations, could not be inadvertently sent to the SCR.

The technical amendments needed for the SCR are due to be delivered through BT’s Clinical Spine Application in release 2008b, which will be in place before Easter 2009, according to Dr Braunold.

The SCR is due to be rolled out nationally in 2009-10.

Lyn Whitfield

Reader's Comments

And SUS Consent.

23 Sep 08 14:22

How will CFH deal with patients for whom Sec 10 applies for the SUS database? All records from SCR and the Detailed Care Record are sent to the SUS database. How will CFH deal with these consent issues? All the public's comments in the weekend press are firmly against SUS. Hence CFH should have a strategy in place to deal with these consent issues. (Post edited by EHI)

sharing info is easy

stressfreedave@hotmail.com

23 Sep 08 19:31

I got an email some time ago from CfH which pointed out that if patients wanted treatment their data would have to be sent vi NCRS. That was a couple of years ago and CfH may have changed that rule, but I doubt it.

Sending the info from hospital to GP should be easy without having to store it on a national database. Even I am not against sending it via computer. It is where it is stored that CfH fall down. Why they demand on holding the info on a national database is odd to say the least. If the IT people want to use IT and help patients protect their info they would have come up with a way to send the info without it being stored on a national database.

You only have to look at the likes of GP2GP to see how records can be sent. As far as I know GP2GP does not involve the data siting on a server accessable to all sorts of people, so why cant CfH do the same?

There are all sorts of good practices going on that for some reason CfH have ignored. Is it because it is too simple or do they just want to make the new system seem far better than it is?

GP2GP...

25 Sep 08 12:18

Isn't GP2GP a CFH initiative?

CfH finally finds out how to learn from others

25 Sep 08 21:49

Consent to view? Haven't they been doing that in Wales for the past two years?

Detailed Care Record

26 Sep 08 10:15

Note the comments on the linked thread relevant to this issue http://www.ehiprimarycare.com/news/4132/pct_seeks_to_align_scr_and_systmone_consent_models

RE: GP2GP...

stressfreedave@hotmail.com

26 Sep 08 16:08

I think it is but I only mentioned it because I thought the fact GPs can do it, so should others.

I dont know a lot about GP2GP, but if it works without storing info on national databases or other servers then that is good practice and would be saver than sending info via the post. I dont care who did it, even CfH can get it right on the odd occasion.