RCGP urges ‘universal and rapid’ SNOMED deployment

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.