Emergency care summary set to rollout in Scotland

A project which allows out-of-hours services access to an emergency care summary of patients’ GP records is likely to be rolled out across Scotland.

The Emergency Care Summary project has been piloted in two health boards, Ayrshire and Arran and Grampian, since late last year and an evaluation report to be published shortly is expected to give the go ahead for the scheme to be rolled out nationally. 

The annual report from Scotland’s Chief Medical Officer, published last week, says that the emergency care summary project will be expanded both in terms of who is able to access the summary record and in what is included in that record. The CMO’s report says the record will be made available to accident and emergency and ambulance staff and the summary record will grow to include significant past medical history.

The CMO’s report adds: "Such initiatives dramatically improve patient safety. All such work is supported by patient involvement and consent."

A Scottish Executive spokesperson told EHI Primary Care that the feedback from the pilots had been "very positive." She added: "It looks likely the scheme will be rolled out across Scotland from March 2006."

The current project has allowed out of hours services access to demographics, medication and allergies information from GPs’ records. The subset of data is taken from practices’ systems daily where emergency care summary information has changed.

Consent is obtained from patients by the out of hours clinician before the summary is accessed and patients can also opt out of having their information sent to the emergency care summary store.