Contractual requirements came into force requiring that GP practices should make available a statement of intent in relation to the following IT developments:-
- Referral management
- Electronic appointment booking
- Online booking of repeat prescriptions
- Summary Care Record
- GP2GP transfers
- Patient access to records
Please find below details of the practice stance with regards to these developments:-
Referral management
All practices must include the NHS Number as the primary identifier in all NHS clinical correspondence issued by the practice.
Electronic appointment booking
Practices are required to promote and offer the facility for all patients, who wish to, to book, view, amend, cancel and print appointments online. We currently offer the facility for booking and cancelling appointments on- line.
Online booking of repeat prescriptions
Practices are required to promote and offer the facility for all patients, who wish to, to order online, view and print a list of their repeat prescriptions for necessary drugs, medicines or appliances. We currently offer the facility for ordering repeat prescriptions on-line.
Interoperable records/Summary Care Record.
Practices are required to enable successful automated uploads of any changes to a patient’s summary information, at least on a daily basis to the Summary Care record. Having your Summary Care Record available will help anyone treating you without your full medical record. They will have access to information about any medication you may be taking and any drugs that you have a recorded allergy or sensitivity to.
Currently Walnut Tree practice has a shared clinical database and is technically unable to implement uploading of the Summary Care Record (SCR). Whilst the practice is happy in principle to proceed to upload the SCR we cannot do so until the clinical system server issues are resolved at a higher level by the Health & Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC), Egton Management Information System (EMIS) and Connecting for Health(CfH). Our intention is to upload the SCR as soon as our clinical system has the capacity to do so.
GP2GP record transfers
There is a contractual requirement to utilise the GP2GP facility for the transfer of patient records between practices, when a patient registers or de-registers. It is very important that you are registered with a doctor at all times. If you leave your GP and register with a new GP, your medical records will be removed from your previous doctor and forwarded on to your new GP via NHS England.
It can take several weeks for your paper records to reach your new surgery. With GP to GP record transfers, your electronic record is transferred to your new practice much sooner. Drs Kenny, Opher & Curtis Hayward confirm that GP2GP transfers are already active and we send and receive patient records via this system.
Patient access to their GP record
Practices are required to promote and offer the facility for patients to view online, export or print any summary of information from their records relating to medications, allergies, adverse reactions and any other items/date such as ‘additional’ record elements which has been agreed between the contractor and the patient. We currently offer the patient access facility to Walnut Tree patients.
