New fund for electronic prescribing
pharmafile | May 21, 2013 | News story | Sales and Marketing | Francis report, IT, NHS, electronic prescribing
A new £260 million fund is to help accelerate progress toward electronic prescribing in NHS hospitals.
The government says it is responding to the safety concerns raised in the Francis report (into the deaths and maltreatment of patients at Stafford General hospital) which called on the NHS to make better use of technology to improve safe, effective care.
Last year at least 11 people died in the NHS because they were given the wrong prescriptions, according to government figures. The new fund will be used to adopt technology to help prevent prescribing errors, which it says are in around 8% of hospital prescriptions. Studies have shown that the use of technology can cut these errors by half.
Announcing the new fund, health secretary Jeremy Hunt said it would help protect patients by ensuring that doctors and nurses are able to access accurate details about the care of a patient. The hope is that it will also make a patient’s journey through different parts of the NHS much safer, because their electronic records can follow them wherever they go.
Hunt said: “This fund will allow doctors and nurses to make the NHS safer by harnessing the very latest technology. In many places, right now, a paramedic picking up a frail elderly woman who has had a fall will not always know she has dementia, because he or she cannot access her notes. Or a doctor is prescribing the wrong drugs, because they don’t know what drugs their patient is already on.
“If we are to improve patient safety then we must allow the NHS to have access to the best tools available and this fund will help them achieve that.”
The fund will be used by hospitals to replace outdated paper based systems for patient notes and prescriptions, and is a critical stepping-stone in helping the NHS go digital by 2018.
It will be primarily used for ‘electronic prescribing’ – which means computer generated prescriptions sent by doctors directly to pharmacies, linked to barcodes unique to each patient. This kind of technology plays a huge part in cutting errors and improving safety.
Tim Kelsey, National director for Patients and Information within NHS England, said: “We are delighted to be working with the NHS, DH colleagues and frontline NHS staff to ensure that this fund enables the NHS to make substantial progress towards routine use of high quality data at the point of care.”
He added that the changes would help healthcare professionals deliver world-class patient care. The fund will also be used for creating electronic systems, linked to patient records, that integrate across different hospital departments.
An existing example of such a system is St Helens and Knowsley NHS Trust, who have all of their patient records accessible online for doctors and nurses at the click of a mouse. Another example is the system at New Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, where an online ‘portal’ allows patients to view and update their own medical records so doctors can get instant, real-time updates.
Professor Sir Bruce Keogh, medical director of NHS England, said: “This new fund will help patients get better and safer care by giving clinicians access to the right information when they need it most.”
He added that replacing paper systems would help relieve patients’ frustration at having to continually repeat their medical and medication history, often in the same hospital, because their records aren’t available.
Expanding the use of electronic prescribing of medications in hospitals will help improve safety, save lives and save taxpayer’s money.
NHS hospitals can bid for the money to fund projects but in order to be eligible, they must demonstrate that these will lead to better, safer care.
The £25 million fund is likely to provide only a small incentive to NHS providers, however, as the cost of introducing new systems is considerable. Most electronic prescribing initiatives typically cost tens of millions of pounds for just one trust.
Andrew McConaghie
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