Statement of Intent – IT Requirement
Contractual requirements came into force from 1st April 2014 requiring that GP Practices should make available a statement of intent in relation to the following I.T. developments:
Summary Care Record (SCR)
NHS England require practices to enable successful automated uploads of any changes to patient’s summary information, at least on a daily basis, to the Summary Care Record (SCR) or have published plans in place to achieve this.
Having your Summary Care Record (SCR) available will help anyone treating you without your full medical record. They will have access to information about any medication you may be taking and any drugs that you have a recorded allergy or sensitivity to.
Of course if you do not want your medical records to be available in this way then you will need to let us know so that we can update your record.
Dr Rahman confirm that your SCR is automatically updated on at least a daily basis to ensure that your information is as up to date as it can possibly be.
GP to GP Record Transfers
NHS England requires practices to utilise the GP2GP facility for the transfer of patient records between practices, when a patient registers or de-registers (not for temporary registration).
It is very important that you are registered with a doctor at all times. If you leave your GP and register with a new GP, your medical records will be removed from your previous doctor and forwarded on to your new GP via NHS England. It can take your paper records up to two weeks to reach your new surgery.
With GP2GP record transfers your electronic record is transferred to your new practice much sooner.
Dr Rahman confirms that GP2GP transfers are already being undertaken at Acorn Medical Practice.
Patient Online Access to Their GP Record
NHS England require practices to promote and offer the facility to enable patients online access to appointments, prescriptions, summary care record, allergies and adverse reactions or have published plans to achieve this.
We currently offer the facility for booking, cancelling appointments and for ordering repeat prescriptions online. This is done by the SystmOnline facility. If you do not already have a user name and password for this system – please register for them at the practice reception.
However, online access to your medical records has not yet been enabled.
Data for Commissioning and Other Secondary Care Purposes
It is already a requirement of the Health and Social Care Act that practices must meet the reasonable data requirements of commissioners and other health and social care organisations through appropriate and safe data sharing for secondary uses, as specified in the technical specification for care data.
At Acorn Medical Practice we have specific arrangements in place to allow patients to “opt out” of care.data which allows for the removal of data from the practice. Please contact reception for further information on this.
Dr Rahman confirm these arrangements are in place and that we undertake annual training and audits to ensure that all our data is handled correctly and safely via the Information Governance Toolkit.