Audit Scotland flags concerns with ECR
Scotland’s national audit body has raised concerns about the scope and quality of the country’s Emergency Care Summary. In its latest report on medicines management, Audit Scotland says that nine out of ten health boards have now implemented the ECR in Accident and Emergency departments. The ECR contains information from GP records and is intended to help staff […]
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Summary care record is indelible
Patients who do not opt-out of the Summary Care Record prior to one being created for them will not be able have their record deleted later, it has been revealed. If a patient subsequently opts out of the SCR their record will be ‘masked’ and become inaccessible by NHS staff, but it will not be deleted. […]
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Work stops again on ContactPoint
The introduction of the national children’s database ContactPoint has been suspended after local authority staff discovered loopholes in the system designed to protect the most vulnerable young people. The Department of Children, Schools and Families said it had “paused” the flow of data into ContactPoint from sources such as the child benefit database after local […]
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Database mooted for healthcare professionals
The Department of Health is to investigate whether a national database should be set up to hold information on the fitness to practice of all healthcare professionals in the UK. The database would hold information on concerns about the performance, conduct and health of healthcare professionals and will be considered as part of a scoping […]
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Call to scrap ‘illegal’ NHS patient database
A quarter of all government databases, including NHS Detailed Care Records Service and NHS CRS Secondary Uses Service, are illegal and should be scrapped or redesigned, a major new report on government databases has claimed. Serious concerns are also raised about the NHS Summary Care Record Service, and its potential for abuse, with an independent […]
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Diabetes predictor based on QResearch
A simple new score that could help to identify those at most risk of developing type 2 diabetes has been developed using the QResearch database, researchers have announced. A study published on BMJ.com reveals details of QDScore, the new diabetes risk algorithm. The researchers say this can identify people at high risk of diabetes, enabling […]
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Laming – review IT for children’s services
The government must look at rolling out a single national IT system for children’s services because local IT systems are hampering progress with child protection, according to a report from Lord Laming. Lord Laming’s latest review of child protection, commissioned in the wake of the Baby P tragedy, was published last week and all its […]
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Doc ratings site moves into charity work
The controversial website iwantgreatcare, which allows patients to rate their doctors, is expanding into other areas of NHS work, in a move that aligns with Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s call for public service users to be able to rate them.
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Half of PCT-practice agreements signed
More than 50% of GP practices have now signed their PCT-practice agreement for GP Systems of Choice. Just under 4,000 practices had signed up to the agreement by 27 February, according to figures published by NHS Connecting for Health, leaving 3,286 practices still to do so. The figures show that 37 PCTs have signed agreements […]
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New QRISK2 for heart disease launched
A new version of the QRISK software which identifies patients most at risk of developing cardiovascular disease (CVD) has been released for clinical use. QRISK2 uses a new CVD equation to estimate an individual’s risk of developing heart disease over the next ten years, drawing on analysis of primary care data from practices using the […]
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