Thursday 5 February 2009

NHS Rangers lead the Way Confidentialiy #2 -> 20 years on.


Fast forward 20 years to another galaxy closer to Northernshire. A good mate of ND invited ND down South to show how you could see X-rays, CT scans and MRI scans taken at the local hospital on a GPs’ desktop computer. Given the far North where ND works and distances involved this was a wonderful invention and could be of so much use until ND asked was it available to all?

ND was disappointed to hear that a few pilot practices had got this system with obvious benefits e.g. GPs seeing fractures on patients requesting home visits after A&E attendances that had been missed by more junior A&E Drs and even incorrect radiology reports being corrected because of the ability of a local GP to actually see x-rays with the patient at the same time.

ND’s former comrade at arms told him how a patient had seen them and as a result he had saved the local Politburo a few grand because the x-ray report was wrong from the radiologist but ND’s friend had years of experience at looking at this type of x-ray and so correctly treated the patient purely because of the ability to see the incorrectly reported x-ray and the patient at the same time. If he had relied on the type written report several tens of thousands of pounds of compensation would ultimately have been paid out.

(Aside: in medicine the ideal is that you see the patient and the x-ray together. In some of Northernshire patients were sent for x-ray by their GPs and the reports came back from overseas some 3 months later due to a shortage of radiologists in the UK. Another reason why this could be useful but we digress dear reader.)

However the good comrade commissar idiot managers at the local Politburo had decided to restrict its roll out to further practices while encouraging and forcing the use of Choose and Book, Connecting for Health and Summary Care Records against the wishes of local GPs and most informed patients.

The reason?

“Patient confidentiality”.

Déjà vu or what?

The local Politburo felt that a roll out of the ability of a few 10s of local GPs to see a few 10s of thousands of patients’ X-rays from the local hospital serving a 100,000 patients would breach “patient confidentiality” while the roll out of the ability to see 60 million records by over a million unaccountable users would not.

NHS Rangers lead the way onto victory.

Praise be to the Party for they see what ND and other GPs cannot. Patient confidentiality. And they don’t treat patients.

1 comment:

Jobbing Doctor said...

This is, as you imply, utter nonsense. We piloted this 3 years ago, and it is rolled out to all the practices in JD-land.

Sure I can access other patients' X-Rays. But I don't. And the value to a Jobbing Doctor is immense.

JD