Management Toolkit

Summary care records open to receptionists

Kable

Published: 04 Mar 2008 14:05 GMT

Administrative staff will have access to the confidential summary care records, under rules for the NHS National Programme for IT.

NHS Connecting for Health is to allow individual healthcare organisations to decide who has access to confidential electronic patient records, created as part of the £12.4bn National Programe for IT (NPfIT).

In a statement to GC News, CfH said: "We believe it is important not to dictate to organisations how they run their businesses. GP surgeries and hospital trusts use a complex range of staff, all of whom must be trained for the tasks they perform."

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A document obtained by Computer Weekly under a Freedom of Information request reveals that receptionists at Royal Bolton Hospital's accident and emergency unit have been accessing the electronic patient records and printing them to add to record cards.

"Bolton is one of a number of areas piloting summary care records (SCRs), to test out in practical terms how the system works best in practice," said CfH. "Access to the SCR is limited to those NHS staff whose role requires them to have access. There is a full audit trail of who has been accessing SCRs which is available to patients on request."

Paul Cundy, a member of the British Medical Association's IT committee, told BBC Radio Four's Today programme that the BMA had been told that there would be role based access control, allowing medical staff to see the entire record and non-medical staff to see only names and contact details.

"The practice, it transpires, is that healthcare assistants — who are nothing other than trained receptionists or telephonists — actually are being given access to the clinical records," he told the programme.