EMIS to roll out patient access to records

Tags: EMIS GP HealthSpace Wales

16 Oct 2007

EMIS is set to roll out patient access to records across all of its practices.

The primary care IT supplier, which provides GP systems to nearly 60% of the UK market, has been testing patient record access for more than a year in a handful of practices.

In May the company announced it was looking for an additional 100 practices interested in enabling patients to view their records online. Dr David Stables, co-founder and clinical director of EMIS, said 120 practices had signed up but only about 30 practices had gone on to provide access to patients and there were currently about 20 to 30 record views each day.

He told EHI Primary Care: “It’s been a bit slower than we hoped so now we are planning to make it more widely available.”

Dr Stables said experience with other EMIS innovations, such as online appointment booking and repeat prescription requesting, showed take up was slow initially although 25% of EMIS practices now use online appointment booking and a higher percentage use repeat prescription requesting.

He added: “Patient access to records is a whole new way of thinking and there is also the time it takes to recruit patients. It’s just hard finding the time to do new things.”

Dr Stables said rollout to all EMIS practices would begin once the company had its strong authentification system in place. He added: “We are favouring the approach that strong authentification is what we will be recommending and are negotiating with the suppliers of the tokens at the moment.”

Dr Stables said EMIS was working closely on patient record access with projects such as MyHealthOnline in Wales and HealthSpace in England. Dr Gillian Braunold told EHI Primary Care this week that she expects patients in some of the early adopter areas to view their Summary Care Records over HealthSpace for the first time at the end of this month.

Fiona Barr

Reader's Comments

accessing records and security

stressfreedave@hotmail.com

16 Oct 07 19:10

With all this patient access via computers (even their own in the future) what is being done to ensure that the patients computer, or any other computer they use, is 100% secuure?

I have had access to my medical records without having to use a computer, the biggest problem I had was stoping other people accessing my records that were on the computer (my records are currently held on paper because that was the only way my GP could stop other people reading them)

The need to access medical information when it is needed most

amir.hannan@nhs.net

16 Oct 07 23:10

I can understand the need for patient records to be secure as this goes to the heart of the doctor-patient relationship but no system is 100% secure - even paper records. (Remember when Shipman was arrested, a patient's record was recovered from his garage - I wonder how secure that was?). We need to also consider the needs of patients (and clinicians) to access health records when the patient presents for unscheduled care (out of hours, casualty, immediately necessary at another practice). The public, patients, clinicians and managers need to consider the need to access high quality information with the potential risk of any breach. I have now been offering my patients access to their GP held record for over a year with not a single problem. In fact a number of my patients have spoken publicly and even have videos on You Tube as well as blogs for you to see and comment on. See www.patientra.co.uk and click on discussion to see what they have to say. Send me an e-mail for links to my consent process. I am due to speak at the PRIMIS plus conference as well as the NHS Alliance conference where you can have an opportunity to discuss things in person and in public.

the reason for access to GP records..

maryhawking@tigers.demon.co.uk

20 Oct 07 18:10

I suspect that there is a difference in the reasons - from the patient's point of view - of having access to their GP's records about them. One would be for themselves - checking on accuracy, and participating in their own care. The other would be for other health care professionals to have access to all or part of their record to help with their health care. The advantage of the EMIS solution is that it would put the patient firmly in charge. The disadvantage is that 1. the patients most in need of access by other medical services are the ones least likely to request access ( but the same applies to HealthSpace) and 2. there doesn't appear to be a means of enabling access for health care professionals for patients who are too confused or IT incompetent (or too ill) to authorise access at times of need. In fact the groups with the most need - such as "frequent fliers" - might well be the group least able to take advantage of this system. Would it be possible to allow access to the summary record (as held in the practice) as an additional option?