TPP develops text messaging service
Primary care and community healthcare IT providers, TPP, have introduced text messaging to work alongside their flagship SystmOne solution. The solution has been piloted by Holycroft Surgery, a GP surgery in Bradford and Airedale Teaching Primary Care Trust which was also the first GP practice to use SystmOne. Using the text messaging addition, the surgery can send […]
News
Half of PCT IT staff left in the dark over mergers
A telephone poll of newly merged primary care trusts by EHI Primary Care has revealed that almost half of the 40 PCTs contacted do not yet have plans in place for their individual IT departments. EHI Primary Care contacted trusts prior to them merging on Sunday and found that most had not got past appointing new […]
News
Call for co-operation on new way forward for NPfIT
A call for the ‘old guard’ of health informatics and the ‘new kids on the block’ to work together to take the National Programme for IT forward has come from the British Computer Society Primary Health Care Specialist Group chair. Speaking at the group’s annual meeting in Oxfordshire, Ewan Davis, said relations between the two […]
News
CfH looking for PCTs to trial summary record
NHS Connecting for Health is looking for primary care trusts to become early adopters for the NHS Care Records Service summary record. The agency wrote to all PCTs last week seeking expressions of interest to be early adopter sites, which it says will assess “several key concepts” associated with the summary record. These include the implied consent model […]
News
Number of PCTs to be halved
Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt this week announced the reorganisation of Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) in England, almost halving the number from the current 303 to 152. The new Primary Care Trusts will be established from 1 October 2006. The DH said the announcement was the final part of the ‘Commissioning a Patient-Led NHS’ consultation, which […]
News
Patient records may only be shared locally, say CfH
Detailed electronic patient records will not be accessible outside the local groups of organisations that created them, in direct contradiction of the government’s vision of records available “wherever and whenever you need them”, it has emerged. An internal document produced by Connecting for Health reveals that although its proposed consent model would allow clinicians across […]
News
Meet the suppliers: Liquidlogic
EHI Primary Care talks to health and social care software specialist Liquidlogic, one of the suppliers to have thrived under the NHS IT programme.
Feature
Scottish GPs aim for 90% e-referral in 2006
Scottish GPs should be sending 90% of referrals electronically by the end of March next year, according to new guidance on preparation for a single record. The target is just one of the areas covered in the letter from the Scottish Executive which is designed to mitigate the risks of planning blight before a new […]
News
PCT chiefs warn on reconfiguration plans
41% of primary care trust chief executives think that the planned reconfiguration of their organisations will have a negative effect on implementing the National Programme for IT, according to a survey this week. Only 12% thought there would be a positive effect and 47% thought there would be no effect. ‘Rushed’, ‘incoherent’, ‘political’ and ‘vague’ were […]
News
PCT mergers look set to disrupt IT plans
IT departments of NHS organisations are beginning to feel the impact of plans to shake-up the structure of the health service which will see PCTs merge and no longer be service provider organisations. Some heads of department say lastweek’s announcement of the plans has already cast doubt on some implementation plans while others report fears […]
News