The NHS Commissioning Board is looking for a health economy to become an “exemplar of interoperability” for the rest of the country by mid-2015.
The board’s national director for patients and information has also warned of financial consequences for trusts that fail to have electronic record keeping in place by April 2014.
Tim Kelsey told eHealth Insider the NHS CB wants to work with a local health economy to make it an “exemplar of interoperability” by the middle of 2015.
Kelsey declined to name any regions, but said more than ten had already been in touch with him regarding the interoperability pilot project.
The commissioning board was committed to “creating a real-world exemplar of the future," he added.
“We’re looking to invite people to recommend themselves as potential partners," he said. “There are already a number of places in the country that are pretty close, but haven’t quite got there yet.”
Kelsey said the project was not about pouring extra funding into a particular area, but using the pilot site to show the huge benefits that can be gained by using technology.
“One of the reasons why the digital future hasn’t quite happened yet is because the benefits for the local health economy haven’t really been clear,” he explained.
This meant that in tight financial times, IT was constantly falling to the bottom of the list of priorities for investment.
“What we really want to demonstrate is that this isn’t something you should seek extra funding for, but is fundamental to improving patient outcomes. IT is as important as doctors and nurses and should be in the heartbeat of how a local community administers its health,” he said.
“So there will be some money available, but the idea is to work with a community that already has that vision.”
In Kelsey’s view, the absence of safe electronic record keeping is the most important obstacle to progressing the patient agenda.
“That’s at the top of the list of the biggest things that should be happening for patient safety and outcomes that isn’t happening,” he said.
Kelsey said NHS hospitals would need to have operational electronic patient records working by April 2014 to meet the data flow requirements set by the NHS CB.
Any trusts expecting to be funded by the board would need to meet this requirement. Kelsey acknowledged that some hospitals would find this challenging.
The NHS CB would work with providers that could not meet their contractual obligations to do the “best that’s possible and practical.”
“But equally, it’s a very serious commitment and it will be enforced contractually so we need to have a conversation with the hospitals and the sector about what that means in practice,” Kelsey explained.
“This isn’t going to be a case of things being set it contracts that are never really enforced properly.”
Electronic record keeping has been identified as a significant milestone towards health secretary Jeremy Hunt’s target to make the NHS paperless by 2018.
The Department of Health has produced a YouTube video to show the benefits of a paperless NHS, entitled ‘Taking the hassle out of healthcare’.