Leading GP IT representatives have written to Scottish health minister Andy Kerr to demand urgent action to improve the GPASS computer system.
The letter sent by the chairs of the joint IT committee of the Royal College of General Practitioners and the General Practitioner Committee claims GPASS is not fit for purpose, is putting patient care at risk and hindering the development of electronic care records.
Dr Paul Cundy and Dr Alan Hassey outline a whole series of concerns that the committee and the GPASS User Group have with GPASS. They say the most pressing are a series of safety issues and highlight the first as missing and or translocated clinical notes, and instances of electronic clinical notes being lost, or inserted in the wrong patient record.
The letter adds: “Secondly, summary sheets, (which are legally required when a patient changes practice) also fail to print full clinical notes, omit data and values, and so fail to comply with Data Protection Act requirements. Thirdly, drug safety warnings are not yet improved -in fact they are missing entirely from the new live version of GPASS Clinical.”
The two GPs say these problems mean GPASS 5.6 cannot be safely used by practices. They say GPASS 5.7, which they claim has been delayed by six months, will introduce DPA-compliant reports and some minor fixes.
The letter adds: “These current products are adequate for practices which are content to restrict themselves to use of the appointments and repeat prescribing modules, but not for live clinical use in paperlight practice, and so neither 5.6 and 5.7 are fit for purpose in developing the future Electronic Health Record.”
However a statement issued by NHS National Services Scotland says there are no new issues identified in the latest correspondence from the BMA.
It adds: “Many of the issues have been resolved and the outstanding ones are being urgently addressed by us and our commercial partners, AxSys Technology and Atos Origin.”
Other concerns listed in the letter from the joint GP IT committee include delays in the deployment of GPASS’s new software, GPASS Clinical, and problems with both the new system and the managed servers on which they are installed. The problems led the GPASS User group national executive to recommend last month that no further practices upgrade.
GPASS Clinical has so far only been deployed to 27 practices, representing 3% of GPASS practices in Scotland, despite a demand from the user group that 90% of practices should have the system installed by the middle of this year.
The letter says: “The NUG was alarmed in June 05 when the management dismissed with derision a request for a target of 90% of users to be on GPASS Clinical by March 06. The current figure of 3%, with most sites dissatisfied, represents a massive failure to deliver that must now call the wisdom of further public funding of GPASS into serious question.”
The letter to the health minister adds: “We regret having to write to you in these terms, but it seems that you are not being fully advised of these facts that are well-known to active users.”
Commenting on the letter Dr Cundy said: “As far back as 2002, it was acknowledged that there were significant problems with GPASS but we are still waiting for these to be resolved. At least one of these unresolved issues represents a significant safety risk.
Meanwhile, GPs remain concerned that this system cannot accommodate the IT
demands of general practice as it is difficult to use in front of a patient, for whom every minute spent by the GP on the computer detracts from the patient experience.”
In reponse the statement from NHS Services Scotland says GPASS Clincial, developed with AxSys, provides rich clinical functionality.
The statement adds: “This excellent choice of partner has recently been confirmed by AxSys also winning a national procurement for a Generic Clinical System that will provide solutions for clinicians in the acute and community sectors across NHS Scotland.
We are in discussions with the Scottish Executive Health Department to ensure that an effective technical environment and robust service, in line with the eHealth technical strategy, and supported by Atos Origin, is available to enable the roll-out of the latest version of GPASS Clinical as quickly as possible.
We believe there are many encouraging and positive signs coming in from the GPASS user base, not least among those who have been working hardest with us to improve the product and the service we provide. We thank them for their patience and assistance and assure them of our continuing commitment to improvement.”
A quarter of the 875 GPASS practices in Scotland have submitted business cases to move away from GPASS as part of Scotland’s system choice initiative and the letter demands that they now be enabled to do so.
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