New clinical director for Summary Care Record

Ending confusion about the content and purpose of the Summary Care Record is the number one priority for the project’s newly appointed clinical director Dr Gillian Braunold.

Dr Braunold, who is shortly to give up her role as co-GP clinical lead for Connecting for Health, has been appointed as clinical director for the SCR and Healthspace, the portal that will allow patients to view their SCR online.

Dr Braunold said that recent crictisim from the Parliamentary Health Committee that surrounded the content and purpose of the SCR was “fair dos”.

She told EHI Primary Care: “If I look back in a year what I would like to have achieved is stakeholder agreement with the direction of travel so that everyone understands what it is that we are delivering and what it is going to be for.”

Dr Braunold said her job would be to balance the advice from the Health Committee to get on with the SCR implementation with the BMA’s insistence that the SCR should not extend beyond the early adopter sites before the independent evaluation is complete.

She added: “I don’t think we are pushing ahead beyond the early adopters. We would look very foolish if we didn’t have project plans in place for what could follow but we are not actively going into PCTs and recruiting more sites.”

Dr Braunold said she had been very keen to see Healthspace included within her job description, and said several hundred patients in an early adopter site had already registered to view their SCR online and would be able to do so from the end of the month.

She added: “Healthspace is what makes the SCR so special in England.”

Dr Braunold said she and fellow GP clinical lead Professor Mike Pringle had been appointed to be clinical leads by CfH on a three year contract in 2004 which was now coming to to an end. Professor Pringle is due to leave his post at the end of this week and Dr Braunold will continue until new appointments are made.

Dr Braunold said she had resigned her seat on the British Medical Association’s General Practitioner Committee this summer because her new job as SCR clinical director was more of an accountable rather than an advisory role. She will continue to be a part-time GP in Kilburn, north London.

Fiona Barr