Electronic Patient Records

susie51

Hi peeps I have not been on here for a while Happy Easter one and all...
I have been working in association with Swansea University contributing to a research project on Chronic Conditions! Recently the idea of Electronic Patient Records has been put forward; run along the lines of an online bank account ie being constantly unpdated, rather than the present computer access which is frozen in time and visits and treatments are added at some vague future time when the clerks in the Drs surgery or hospital find the time. In this way we would be able to peruse the last consultation at leisure rather than having to take it all in at the very time, allowing Drs in the locality we are in, should we be travelling away from home, get our up-to-date details etc.

I would like to know the opinion of all/any of you using this forum on this idea, so feel free to reply to me directly or here, many thanks

border

susie51 wrote:

Hi peeps I have not been on here for a while Happy Easter one and all...
I have been working in association with Swansea University contributing to a research project on Chronic Conditions! Recently the idea of Electronic Patient Records has been put forward; run along the lines of an online bank account ie being constantly unpdated, rather than the present computer access which is frozen in time and visits and treatments are added at some vague future time when the clerks in the Drs surgery or hospital find the time. In this way we would be able to peruse the last consultation at leisure rather than having to take it all in at the very time, allowing Drs in the locality we are in, should we be travelling away from home, get our up-to-date details etc.

I would like to know the opinion of all/any of you using this forum on this idea, so feel free to reply to me directly or here, many thanks

My iniitial reaction was at least there would be up to date information on condition available was favourable. However would I as the patient understand the jargon and what about confidentiality. Presumably there would be safeguards!!. If it improved diagnosis and treatment - yes ok.

lindah

Sounds good to me.
Too often you can't remember exactly a medical term used during the appointment and if you google the wrong one you frighten the living daylights out of yourself.
It would also give a clearer picture of your condition at any given time.
Linda H

susie51

border wrote:

susie51 wrote:

Hi peeps I have not been on here for a while Happy Easter one and all...
I have been working in association with Swansea University contributing to a research project on Chronic Conditions! Recently the idea of Electronic Patient Records has been put forward; run along the lines of an online bank account ie being constantly unpdated, rather than the present computer access which is frozen in time and visits and treatments are added at some vague future time when the clerks in the Drs surgery or hospital find the time. In this way we would be able to peruse the last consultation at leisure rather than having to take it all in at the very time, allowing Drs in the locality we are in, should we be travelling away from home, get our up-to-date details etc.

I would like to know the opinion of all/any of you using this forum on this idea, so feel free to reply to me directly or here, many thanks

My iniitial reaction was at least there would be up to date information on condition available was favourable. However would I as the patient understand the jargon and what about confidentiality. Presumably there would be safeguards!!. If it improved diagnosis and treatment - yes ok.

Re confidentiality I guess it would run along the lines of the online banking systems, you would have a pin etc. as for jargon I guess the sales in medical dictionaries might go up!! Seriously I think we all get familiar with the jargon involved in our own particular complaints....

susie51

My thoughts were that it would be good for my GP and maybe Practise and Rhuemy Nurses to have access so that when I want to discuss things they are equiped to answer my questions. I have never thought to view my own notes but I might occassionally if it was easy, especially after a consultation as I do find it difficult to remember all that was said.

I personally would like to see a Chronic Conditions clinic at my local Surgery where all the different long term conditions got a regular slot in the calendar with the various nurse practitioners attending for peeps who needed to discuss their condition management and treatment in an ongoing fashion.

livinglegend

This is part of the Connecting for Health, £20 billion+, overbudget, overdue, National Programme for IT (NPfIT) in the NHS. The Summary Care Records scheme – one of the largest parts of the programme – is seriously delayed and is unlikely to be deployed before 2014, four years later than originally planned, says the National Audit Office.

One NHS Trust has had to manually check all records because the system surreptitiously creates duplicate records. So far this has cost the hospital an initial extra £7m. Manual checking of records will have to continue indefinitely, as no-one trusts the system.

All information will be fully available to anyone who wishes to conduct medical or social (ie. insurance or politically motivated), research. The mechanisms for controlling and securing access to the information are deeply flawed. A recent case of staff in an A&E department sharing smartcard access highlights the risks. This was authorised by the NHS Trust. Sharing access not only puts at risk the security of the system but also disrupts the audit trail which tracks who has accessed/ammended which record and why.

If you want to check how good it is, the same system is used for Choose and Book appointments. As of Feb 09 only 50% of GPs/hospitals use the system, even though £100,000 is on offer to individuals to use it. The Government has admitted that data on millions of families had been lost by Revenue & Customs, and that nine NHS trusts had lost confidential patient data.

More than three quarters of a major survey of doctors are either “not confident” that data will be safe or “very worried” that data will leak once the £20 billion National Programme for IT (NPfIT) is running.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article3111428.ece

Joseph 8)

colinone

Hello
Well i eas going to ask a whole load of questions but having read Josephs post i think my answer would be not for me.
Colin

livinglegend

There is a major report by the Joseph Rowntree Trust at http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/database-state.pdf

This gives the various NHS database systems in Section 2.1 Page 14, either a Red (means that a database is almost certainly illegal under human rights or data protection law and should be scrapped or substantially redesigned. The collection and sharing of sensitive personal data may be disproportionate, or done without our consent, or without a proper legal basis; or there may be other major privacy or operational problems) or Amber (that a database has significant problems, and may be unlawful) classification.

Worth a read on a dark evening.

I have also found out that once you are on the database, they are unable to delete your records. As the song says, 'you can checkout any time you like, but you can never leave!' Hotel California, Eagles

Joseph 8)

annebr

I have mixed feelings about this. In one respect it's a great idea that all new info is updated in real time. If you have a few different consultants they would be able to check to make sure treatment/drugs are not overlapping etc. But access is something that would need to be looked at closely.

Would need to look into it a bit more.

Anne