RCGP urges 'universal and rapid' SNOMED deployment

Tags: CfH Choice efficiency GP GP2GP GPSoC Informatics RCGP Safety SNOMED

12 Dec 2006

The Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) has written to NHS IT director general Richard Granger calling for the "universal and rapid" deployment of the clinical coding system SNOMED.

The letter from the RCGP's Health informatics Standing Group is understood to have been prompted by concerns about the pace of change towards SNOMED CT by GP system suppliers. The current proposed compliance levels in the GP Systems of Choice (GPSoC) 'maturity model' include use of SNOMED CT as a requirement only at level 5.

Levels 1-4 cover compliance with Choose and Book, the Electronic Prescription Service, GP2GP record transfer and use of a data centre hosted solution.

Dr Paul Robinson, chairman of the Informatics Standing Group, told EHI Primary Care: "The reason for professional support for SNOMED is that the translation between different coding languages, Read 2 and CTv3 for instance, can be a hindrance in projects like GP2GP transfer. There are clinical safety issues here and SNOMED will bring a single coding language to all primary care and secondary care. Commercial suppliers are unwilling to invest in implementing SNOMED which is why an announcement from CFH would be welcome."

The letter to Richard Granger says that the group believes that the use of SNOMED's rich coding format is fundamental to maintaining the integrity of clinical records transferred between systems, both in terms of efficiency and patient safety. The RCGP also offered its support in implementing the change and engaging clinicians.

The letter, signed by Dr Robinson, also expresses strong support for GPSoC which the group says it views as an essential building block required for managing the convergence of GP clinical systems in the current mixed economy of service providers. The full contents of the letter have not been released.

Reader's Comments

SNOMED: caveat emptor

12 Dec 06 12:12

Readers of this article (and the RCGP) are advised to check the detail before rushing into demands for immediate SNOMED implementation.

Major suppliers, would be implementers and academics are on public record stating SNOMED has manifest and significant quality control and implementation issues.

http://hl7-watch.blogspot.com/

http://www.shopcreator.com/mall/infopageviewer.cfm/Abiescouk/SCT06download

On a purely pragmatic level, clinical code sets supporting QOF/QMAS on the DoH website (URL changes almost daily :-( ) for SNOMED have not been updated since 2005 release (unlike those for the Read Codes which are up to date). This latter alone is unlikely to encourage jobbing GPs to queue up as guinea pigs for the 'imminent' releases of SNOMED enabled systems from EMIS, In Practice and others.

It just isn't as simple as whip the system suppliers I'm afraid.