Councils lag behind on telecare plans
A minority of councils in England are starting to put plans in place for telecare services but most have made few or no preparations, according to survey. The survey results are based on a questionnaire about telecare circulated by independent consultancy, the Telecare Alliance, to the 150 councils in England with responsibility for social services. […]
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New mothers in Wales first to have access to EHRs
New mothers are to be among the first in Wales to receive access to their own electronic health records constructed from the data held by their GPs, as a result of Informing Healthcare (IHC), the Welsh national healthcare IT programme. The scheme is part of the development of the ‘My Health On-Line’ system, which will act […]
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NPfIT support procurement enters final stretch
NHS Connecting for Health has announced that the three remaining bidders for the First Line Service Support (FLSS) contract are Capita, CSC Computer Sciences and Fujitsu. The FLSS project is intended to replace the National Service Desk, a support line that services the National Programme for IT implementation across all five clusters in England. Five […]
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Ofcom investigation dents Patientline results
Patientline, the supplier of bedside phones and entertainment for patients, has reported a 39% increase in pre-tax losses, due partly to an Ofcom investigation into its NHS contracts and incoming call charges. In addition, chairman, Derek Lewis, reports: “The financial stresses within the NHS and the delays in implementation of the major IT programme, Connecting […]
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Patient records to get quality checks
GP practices are to be paid to bring patient records up to national data accreditation standards as part of the NHS national IT programme. According to a report in Doctor magazine practices will have to gain accreditation of their records before they can upload coded information onto the NHS data spine, being built as part […]
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Local trust data overwritten by Choose and Book
E-Health Insider has learned that some hospitals linked to the national Choose and Book appointment booking system are having some local patient record details unexpectedly over-written each time they receive an electronic referral from the NHS spine. As a result, the affected hospitals have to manually re-enter deleted patient details — such as the patient’s […]
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Common exception reporting standards called for
Exception reporting rates for the Quality and Outcomes Framework need to be subject to uniform standards to ensure as many patients as possible benefit from the framework, a GP has argued this week in the British Medical Journal. Dr Stephen Corcoran, a GP in north London, says in his letter that variations in exception reporting […]
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London trust goes live with spine-connected PAS
Queen Mary’s Hospital, south-east London, has become the first hospital trust in London to go live with a ‘strategic’ patient administration system (PAS) connected to the national NHS spine. The implementation marks a genuine milestone for Queen Mary’s Sidcup NHS Trust, the NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT); BT, NPfIT’s prime contractor for London; and […]
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PACS roll-out stalls in NW and West Midlands
The roll-out programme for PACS in the North West and West Midlands of England by CSC looks in danger of stalling. Despite assurances from NHS Connecting for Health (CfH), as recently as two weeks ago, that initial implementations will begin before the end of December 2005, E-Health Insider has confirmed that none of the four […]
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Technology effective in dementia home care
Assistive technology for dementia sufferers living at home can be cost-effective, increase patients’ independence and deliver support to unpaid carers, but it must be properly targeted and maintained, according to an extensive new study by the head of a Northamptonshire care project. The study ‘Safe at Home: The effectiveness of assistive technology in supporting the […]
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