Help patients with NHS Number – NPSA
Primary care organisations that have stopped issuing medical record cards should reinstate the practice as a way of informing patients about the NHS Number. This is one of the points of a Safer Practice Notice issued by the National Patient Safety Agency, which requires all NHS organisations in England and Wales to use the NHS Number […]
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Improved point of care service for students
Connecting for Health (CfH) says it is working with strategic health authorities and primary care trusts to help GP practices to provide improved services to university students in England, through the introduction of a number of services. The new arrangements have already started to show major benefits, according to CfH, with no rise in the backlog of patient registrations […]
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PCTs must roll-out summary records in 2008-09
PCT IM&T plans for the next financial year must include the roll-out of the Summary Care Record and the full implementation of Directly Bookable Services (DBS) for Choose and Book, according to latest guidance from the Department of Health. The guidance sets out the DH’s key expectations on IM&T for 2008/9 and the roles of […]
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Integration to improve newborn testing
One of the 2 million babies to be screened since the launch of NHSP The NHS Newborn Hearing Screening Programme (NHSP) will soon be able to automatically import data from screening devices into a central database, with the aid of InterSystems’ Ensemble integration platform. The NHSP has been using the eScreener Plus (eSP) system from […]
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Birmingham GPs say patients barred for incomplete data
GPs in Birmingham claim that four primary care trusts are rejecting patient registrations if their demographic data is incomplete, as a result of the implementation of the NHS Care Records Service. The city’s local medical committee claim the action by Birmingham’s Shared Services Agency is putting vulnerable patients at risk and leaving practices without the […]
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Wigan Council adopts NHS number as unique ID
Wigan Council has become one of the first English councils to connect health to social care services information after linking to the NHS Spine and adopting the NHS number as its unique identifier for all clients. The project represents a significant improvement in patient safety, reducing data duplication, confusion cases and the fragmentation of care […]
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Summary care records planned for end of 2008
Connecting for Health is planning for every patient in England to have a complete Summary Care Record by the end of 2008. Guidance prepared by CfH for strategic health authorities makes it clear that the Clinical Summary Record will be implemented in two phases. Phase one, due to begin by Easter, will consist of an […]
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NHS Wales streamlines test sample processing
GPs and nurses across Wales are to switch to using printed labels and barcodes when they send test samples to the lab for analysis. Hand-written request forms and labels will be phased out over the next six months under an initiative from Informing Healthcare Wales, the Welsh Assembly Government programme set up to modernise the […]
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Granger promises summary care record pilots by Easter
Connecting for Health’s chief executive, Richard Granger, has revealed that the first pilots of the national summary care record project should be ready to begin by Easter. Speaking at the London Telehealth Symposium yesterday, Granger said that the delayed project summary record will be ready to begin rollout to initial pilot trusts by Easter. Dr […]
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No mistake
Misspelt electronic records can have serious effects. Daloni Carlisle looks at the results of a three-year initiative to test the data quality of GPs’ patient lists.
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