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Showing results for tags 'Electronic Health Record'.
Found 124 results
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News Article
Cybersecurity strategy among dozens of tech promises missed by government
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
The government has failed to meet most of its own deadlines for commitments to improve how the NHS uses data, including developing a cybersecurity strategy, HSJ can reveal. The delays include work to store and analyse patient data more securely, building public trust in the NHS’ use of patient data, and agreeing national strategies on cybersecurity and cloud technology. The strategy and its commitments were published following the Goldacre Review, which called for an overhaul of how NHS patient data is collected, stored and used. It came after the government was forced to indefinitely halt a controversial plan to collect all GP-held patient data in 2021, which resembled the fate of a similar data scheme in 2016. Several data projects have also come under scrutiny from doctors and campaigners in recent years, such as NHS England’s procurement of a new Federated Data Platform and a much-criticised trust’s data-sharing scheme with a credit rating company. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 28 February 2023 -
News Article
Twenty-four UK doctors in five years censured over medical record breaches
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Twenty-four doctors have been disciplined by the UK medical regulator in the last five years after accessing and using information from patients’ treatment records without good reason. The General Medical Council (GMC) said it had struck off two of the 24 doctors it had sanctioned after finding that they had undertaken “inappropriate use” of medical records. Another 10 were suspended, 10 were warned about their future conduct, one had a condition imposed on their licence to practise medicine and the other had to undertake not to repeat their behaviour. The 24 cases were among 194 incidents of doctors allegedly accessing medical records without a clinical justification that prompted a complaint to the regulator between 2017 and 2022. Privacy campaigners said it was shocking that almost 200 people had made complaints to the GMC accusing doctors of violating patients’ confidentiality in that way. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 13 June 2023 -
News Article
‘Archaic’ and risky patient records still used by most GP practices
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Most GP practices in England are still using ‘archaic’ Lloyd George paper records despite a commitment to digitise them, HSJ has found. NHS England’s 2019 GP contract included a commitment to do away with the so-called “Lloyd George envelopes” – named after the early 20th century prime minister who introduced a pre-NHS health insurance scheme – and digitise them by 2022-23. The NHS stopped issuing new envelopes for first-time registrations in January 2021. But Freedom of Information requests submitted by HSJ have revealed that the famous brown paper records, some of them many decades old, are still widely used in England. Where they are still used, staff typically use electronic records for new information, but have to find and consult the paper records occasionally, when they need older information. This is less efficient than if the records had been digitised, and storing the paper records takes up several rooms in many practices. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 5 June 2023 -
News ArticleAn integrated care board (ICB) has advised its GP practices not to give patients automatic access to their records, contradicting NHS England national requirements. Instead, North East London ICB has suggested practices only allow access where patients request it, and subject to conditions. The national go-live date for patients to be allowed automatic access to future entries in their records has been repeatedly delayed since initially being set at December 2021. GPs have argued they needed more time to redact sensitive information, ensure records are not inappropriately shared, and train staff. They have cited workload and safeguarding concerns. The ICB’s chief clinical information officer Osman Bhatti, who is a GP, told HSJ the ICB instead “wanted a process where patients could access both prospective and retrospective records safely, with less workload for GPs and so patients who actually want access can have it”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ. 1 June 2023
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News Article
GMC to investigate ‘stalker’ doctor who shared patient’s records
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
The UK medical regulator has launched an investigation into a “stalker” doctor who accessed intimate details of the health history of a woman who had begun dating the doctor’s ex-boyfriend. The General Medical Council (GMC) is investigating whether the doctor – a consultant at Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge – breached their professional, ethical and legal duties to protect the woman’s personal information. The victim has given the watchdog a statement detailing the consultant’s repeated violations of her medical records and documentation that shows what she did. The GMC declined to comment because it has not yet decided to open a formal disciplinary case against the consultant, who could face serious sanctions including a ban on working as a doctor. One of the GMC’s investigative officers is examining the victim’s claims and collecting evidence. The Guardian revealed how the doctor had looked at the victim’s hospital and GP records seven times last August and September, in the early stages of the woman’s relationship with a man the consultant had been involved with for several years. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 15 May 2023 -
News Article
Warnings over NHS data privacy after ‘stalker’ doctor shares woman’s records
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
The confidentiality of NHS medical records has been thrown into doubt after a “stalker” hospital doctor accessed and shared highly sensitive information about a woman who had started dating her ex-boyfriend, despite not being involved in her care. The victim was left in “fear, shock and horror” when she learned that the doctor had used her hospital’s medical records system to look at the woman’s GP records and read – and share – intimate details, known only to a few people, about her and her children. “I felt violated when I learned that this woman, who I didn’t know, had managed to access on a number of occasions details of my life that I had shared with my GP and only my family and very closest friends. It was about something sensitive involving myself and my children, about a family tragedy,” the woman said. The case has prompted warnings that any doctor in England could abuse their privileged access to private medical records for personal rather than clinical reasons. Sam Smith, of the health data privacy group MedConfidential, said: “This is an utterly appalling case. It’s an individual problem that the doctor did this. But it’s a systemic problem that they could do it, and that flaws in the way the NHS’s data management systems work meant that any doctor can do something like this to any patient. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 14 May 2023 -
Content ArticleThis investigation by the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) aims to improve patient safety by supporting staff to access critical information about patients at their bedsides in emergency situations. It defines critical information as ‘information about patients that needs to be accessed rapidly and accurately to ensure correct care is delivered when it is required’. In this investigation, critical information was considered through a focus on patient identifiers (such as name and date of birth) and decisions relating to whether someone is recommended to receive cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) if their heart stops (cardiac arrest). The reference event for this investigation was the care of a patient in a hospital who was found unresponsive in bed. A short time later, he stopped breathing and his heart stopped. Help was immediately sought from the ward staff and a team gathered around the patient’s bed, where they confirmed the patient’s identity and noted that a decision had been made that he was not recommended to receive CPR if his heart stopped. As a result, CPR was not started. Around 10 minutes later, a nurse who had previously been caring for the patient returned from their break and recognised that the patient had been misidentified as the patient in the next bed. The patient whose heart had stopped was recommended to receive CPR. CPR was immediately started, but despite this, the patient died.
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Content ArticleIn this BMJ Editorial, author Sam Patel says that linking medicines information from all care settings into a shared digital medication record accessible to all health and care clinicians has the potential to substantially reduce medication errors and improve patient safety.
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Content ArticleIn this interview for the Betsy Lehman Center in Massachusetts, Lee Kim Erickson, Senior Vice President and Chief Quality Officer at Wellforce, talks about maintaining a focus on patient safety during times of crisis, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on training for healthcare workers and the importance of maintaining a focus on care from the patient's point of view.
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Content ArticleThere is a huge challenge to improve technology adoption and readiness across the NHS. This article in HSJ looks at a partnership between tech services company Agyle and Dorset County Hospital (DCH) which aimed to develop a digital patient record strategy which places user experience at the heart of its approach. DCH's objective was for its staff to access a decreasing number of systems, designed around clinical processes, with data flowing seamlessly between those systems. The article looks at how Agyle and DCH worked together to achieve improved clinical safety, interoperability, cost-effectiveness and future-proofing through their strategy.
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Content ArticlePatient safety is vital to well-functioning health systems. A key component is safe prescribing, particularly in primary care where most medications are prescribed. Previous research has demonstrated that the number of patients exposed to potentially hazardous prescribing can be reduced by interrogating the electronic health record (EHR) database of general practices and providing feedback to general practitioners (GPs) in a pharmacist-led intervention. This study aimed to develop and roll out an online dashboard application that delivers this audit and feedback intervention in a continuous fashion.
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Content ArticleIn July 2022, HSIB launched a national investigation into the safety risk of clinical investigation booking systems failures. Specifically, the investigation explores the use of paper or hybrid booking systems and the production of appointment letters. This interim bulletin highlights a safety risk identified by the investigation and presents a safety observation for the attention of NHS care providers. Some vital NHS services still use paper-based or hybrid systems, which may have been developed over time and could leave unintended gaps where patients can be lost in the system. The reference case for this investigation is the experience of a patient whose magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan was not rescheduled following a cancellation, leading to a delay in the diagnosis of cancer. Hybrid systems were in use, which did not assist staff to keep track of patients. Additionally, the hybrid systems in use did not allow appointment letters in non-English languages to be produced.
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News ArticleGeneral practices should delay rolling out the accelerated citizens’ access programme, due to go live on 1 November, if they have concerns over safety, the BMA has said. In guidance published on 25 October the BMA’s General Practitioners Committee said that while many practices would be able to implement the scheme before the deadline some would need more time to prepare, to ensure that they can roll it out in line with the Data Protection Act and safeguarding measures. The access scheme, led by NHS England, will automatically give patients the ability to see any new entries to their GP medical record through the NHS App. As part of safeguarding practices it will require GPs to review each record to identify any safety concerns related to providing patient access, such as in cases of domestic violence or coercive relationships. Where there are safeguarding concerns, practices can prevent patients from having automatic access by adding a specific SNOMED code to the patient’s record before 1 November 2022. David Wrigley, deputy chair of the BMA’s GP Committee for England, said, “We have a duty of care to speak up when patient safety is at risk, which is why we encourage practices even slightly unsure about whether they can deliver this programme before the start of November, to refer to our guidance. Our patients are at the heart of what we do, and we will always act in their best interests.” Read full story Source: BMJ, 26 October 2022
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News Article
IT failure disrupts patient care ‘at number of trusts’
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
An IT failure has left clinicians at ‘a number of trusts’ which use the Cerner Millennium system unable to access patient records or write discharge summaries, according to an internal trust email seen by HSJ. The email, sent to staff at Barts Health Trust this afternoon, said there was a “performance issue” with Cerner PowerChart which was affecting “a number of other trusts”. The Powerchart programme is the part of the Cerner Millennium electronic patient record system used by clinicians to process document notes, request tests, view blood tests and scan reports. At least 13 trusts in the English NHS are known to use the Cerner Millennium system but it is not yet clear how many trusts aside from Barts have been affected. One clinician told HSJ the outage was “overwhelmingly unsafe” for patients. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 11 October 2022 -
News Article
Centre has ‘lost the narrative’ over NHSE merger
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
The NHS should reduce the number of different electronic patient records (EPRs) used by trusts and instead rely on a smaller set of suppliers with nationally agreed prices, according to the CEO of NHS Digital. Simon Bolton, who is also NHS England’s interim chief information officer, also said NHSD and NHSE had “lost the narrative a little bit” over their forthcoming merger, due to a “fixation” with reducing NHSE staff numbers by a third; and that the centre of the NHS remained too “autocratic and authoritarian”. Mr Bolton said there were “too many” different EPRs used in the health service and said no private sector organisation would allow such variability for so long. His comments come amid a national drive to improve the uptake and quality of EPRs across NHS providers, following new technology targets set by the government earlier this year. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 28 September 2022 -
News Article
No mental health data taken in cyber attack, NHSE confirms
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
No patient data held by mental health trusts was taken following a cyber attack this summer, NHS England has confirmed. The regulator told HSJ it had received confirmation from tech firm Advanced, which was the subject of a cyber attack in July, that no data had been breached on its Carenotes electronic patient record. The EPR is used by around a dozen mental health trusts. The process of reconnecting trusts fully back to Carenotes also started this week, after providers spent two months with limited or no access to their EPR. HSJ previously revealed that senior NHS chiefs feared patient data may have been taken or accessed by those responsible for the cyber attack, who issued ransom demands to Advanced. Since then, experts have been brought in to investigate any potential data impact following the attack. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 21 September 2022 -
Content ArticleThe Diabetes Record Information Standard defines the information needed to support a person’s diabetes management. It includes information that could be recorded by health and care professionals or the person themselves that is relevant to the diabetes care of the person and should be shared between different care providers. It was commissioned by NHS England and developed in partnership with the Professional Record Standards Body (PRSB). The Diabetes Self-Management Information Standard defines the information that could be recorded by the person themselves (or their carer) at home (either using digital apps or medical technology, for example, continuous glucose monitors or insulin pumps) and shared with health and care professionals.
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Content ArticlePatients have expressed a growing interest in having easy access to their personal health information, and internationally there has been increasing policy focus on patient and care records being more accessible. Limited research from the UK has qualitatively explored this topic from the primary care staff perspective. This study, published in BMC Health Services Research, aimed to understand what primary care staff think about patients accessing electronic health records, highlighting errors in electronic health records, and providing feedback via online patient portals.
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Content ArticleThis webinar hosted by the Patients Association looked at the benefits to patients of accessing their GP health records online, and answered questions from patients about how to access this information.
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Content ArticleThe first ever HETT North event, which brought together digital health leaders from across the country, took place in March 2023 in Manchester. The event highlighted the latest advancements in digital healthcare, and this blog reports on the final keynote session of the day, which focused on ‘Assessing the landscape of digital health transformation – past, present & future’. Key topics included identifying underlying issues that need to be addressed to allow for digital transformation, and the policy surrounding digital transformation in Integrated Care Systems (ICSs). Alongside Clive Flashman, Patient Safety Learning's Chief Digital Officer, the panel included: Sam Shah, Chair, HETT Steering Committee Henrietta Mbeah-Bankas, Head of Blended Learning & Digital Learning & Development Lead, Health Education England Tremaine Richard-Noel, Head of Emerging Technology, Northampton General Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Liz Ashall-Payne, CEO, ORCHA You can watch a video of the discussion on Youtube.
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News Article
Automatic roll-out of patient access to GP records halted at eleventh hour
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
In an eleventh-hour decision NHS England has halted the automatic, blanket roll-out of a scheme that would have given all NHS patients in England prospective online access to their GP-held records the day before it was due to come in. The high-profile scheme to enable patents to automatically view their GP records via the NHS app by 30 November, has been a key digital promise by successive Conservative health secretaries. The last-minute u-turn came following a series of talks between the British Medical Association (BMA) and NHS England, in which the BMA made clear many practices would not be ready to roll out the programme in a safe way for patients, and that it didn’t comply with their data protection obligations. The BMA says the decision is the ‘right thing to do’ for patient safety. The BMA said in a statement that while some practices were ready to implement this, many expressed concerns over safety aspects and that it wasn’t fit for purpose at the present time. Dr David Wrigley, deputy chair of GPC England at the BMA, said: “We’re pleased to hear that NHS England has decided to review the pace and timing of the automatic, mass roll-out of the Citizens’ Access programme. This is, without doubt, the right thing to do for patient safety. “We want patients to be able to access their GP medical records, but this must be done carefully, with the appropriate safeguards in place to protect them from any potential harm. “The deadline of 30 November was, for many practices, just too soon to do this, and removing it will come as a huge relief to GPs and their teams across the country.” Read full story Source: Digital Health, 30 November 2022 -
News ArticleGP practices can block abusive patients from gaining automatic access to their records online if they pose a ‘risk of harm’ to staff, the Royal College of General Practice has said. Automatic access to patients’ prospective patient records is due to be switched on by the end of this month, following delays related to concerns about patient safety. But the RCGP’s toolkit on access to records said practices can refuse access to online records for patients that pose a risk of harm to others too. The guidance said access should "be refused where there is a clear risk of serious harm to the safety of the patient or members of the practice team, or to the privacy of a third party". It added: "If potentially harmful information cannot be successfully redacted and the practice remains concerned about the safety of record access for an individual patient – or in extreme cases, remains concerned that the patient may react violently to information in the record – then the practice may refuse to give the patient record access or restrict the level of access. "It may be possible to give them access to a reduced part of the record such as the Summary Care Record or restrict access to appointments and repeat prescriptions." The guidance said that records access should only be refused or restricted "after discussion with the practice leads for GP Online Services and Safeguarding or after seeking further professional advice from a local relevant agency or national medical indemnity organisation". Read full story Source: Pulse, 18 November 2022
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News ArticleGreg Price died of complications after testicular cancer surgery, but a review of his case found missed faxes, follow-ups and botched data-sharing ultimately cost the vibrant 31-year-old Alberta man his life. All the missteps in his case meant it took 407 days from his first complaint for Price — an engineer, pilot, and athlete — to be diagnosed with cancer. He died three months after his doctor said he should see a specialist, and while he was being passed between multiple doctors, his health data often was not. Now, his sister, Teri Price, says too little has changed in medical information-sharing in the decade since her brother's death. This, despite a review of his case — the 2013 Alberta Continuity of Patient Care Study — that recommended life-saving changes to the healthcare system to avoid more experiences like his. So, she's fighting to improve the system that she says not only failed her brother, but keeps failing to change. Price says that Canadians assume that their health information is shared between doctors to keep them safe and studied to improve the system, but often, it's not. And medical front-line staff in Canada say problems persist when it comes to sharing everything from patient information to aggregate medical and staffing data. "Information tends to be broken up between the services that patients attend," said Ewan Affleck, a doctor in the Northwest Territories who has spent his career fighting for better data access, and a member of the expert advisory arm of the Pan-Canadian Health Data Strategy Group. "The cohesion and use of health data in Canada is legislated to fail." Read full story Source: CBC News, 17 November 2022
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News Article
Doctors warn failing NHS IT systems ‘undermining’ patient safety
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
“Failing” IT systems in the NHS are a threat to patient safety. medics have warned. Doctors and nurses should not “tolerate problems with IT infrastructure as the norm”, according to a new editorial, published in The BMJ. Experts from Imperial College London and University College London point to an incident in which IT systems at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust – one of the largest hospital trusts in the country – went down for 10 days. The outage, caused by the July heatwave, led to procedures and appointments being postponed for a number of patients. The new editorial highlights how IT failures can restrict services as doctors are unable to access records and are prevented from ordering diagnostic tests. This can “bring a halt to the everyday business of healthcare”, they said. The authors suggest that the NHS IT infrastructure is “crumbling” and leads to “poor user experiences” as well as patient safety incidents. “Increasing digital transformation means such failures are no longer mere inconvenience but fundamentally affect our ability to deliver safe and effective care – they result in patient harm and increased costs,” they wrote. Read full story Source: 10 November 2022 -
News Article
NHS cyber attack hits patient care with records left in ‘chaos’ three months on
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Patient care is still being undermined at NHS mental health trusts and social care providers that were hit by a major cyber attack in August, doctors have warned. Three months after the major attack wiped out NHS systems, patients’ records are missing, safety has been compromised, and medication doses are at risk of being missed amid ongoing “chaos”, i News has been told. Dr Andrew Molodynski, mental health lead at the British Medical Association, said the prolonged systems failure has damaged care because records are “integral to patients’ safety”. Mental health patients’ records and safeguarding alerts have not been available in some trusts since 4 August, when NHS software provider, Advanced, was hit by a ransomware attack which targeted its Carenotes records system. A total of 12 NHS mental health trusts have been impacted by the cyber attack, potentially impacting tens of thousands of patients as well as social care providers. According to Advanced’s own hazard log spreadsheet, seen by i News, the risks associated with disruption to its server include “medication doses missed”, “required number of carers not met”, “basic needs not met, such as nutrition and personal care”, and “health needs not met, such as wound care and physical support”. Advanced said: “We recognise that the restoration process has taken longer than we had initially anticipated and we have sought to communicate as clearly and transparently as we have been able.” It said planned dates for restoring the system for each client has been communicated directly and that the “overall restoration programme remains on track”. Read full story Source: i News, 4 November 2022
