The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 278 No 7452 p577
19 May 2007

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Prospect of pharmacy access to care records raised

The Government has indicated again that it plans to authorise pharmacists to have access to patients' electronic care records. However, it qualifies its support by saying that access must be appropriate and that certain mechanisms need to be in place before permission can be granted.

In a Parliamentary written reply, health minister Caroline Flint said: “The role of community pharmacists is evolving to enable them to play a full part in meeting the demands of 21st century health care, and we believe that in order to be able to carry out these wider roles safely and effectively community pharmacists will need appropriate access to health care records.”

She continued: “However, we also recognise, from talking with stakeholders, that there are concerns about how patient consent and confidentiality will be managed in a community pharmacy setting. Information governance standards will need to be strictly adhered to, and appropriate assurance mechanisms put in place before community pharmacists will be permitted access to the national health service care records service. We are committed to public consultation on these issues.”

In March this year, the Prime Minister suggested that pharmacists would have write-access to the care records service in relation to diagnostic services (PJ, 24 March, p333).

In a separate Parliamentary written reply, Ms Flint revealed that over 1,070 GP practices have reached the technical capacity to issue bar-coded prescriptions within the past four weeks. She said that as the volume of such transactions spreads geographically there would be a “related increase in the number of prescriptions dispensed using the electronic service”. The aim is to narrow the gap between prescription messages issued, over 4.5 million last year, and the 63,000 actually dispensed. The latter figure is up from 5,780 in 2005.

Ms Flint added: “Most GPs system suppliers have achieved technical compliance with the electronic prescription service earlier than the pharmacy system suppliers, resulting in more GP practices having used the service for a longer period than pharmacies. In addition, the geographical distribution of bar-coded prescriptions available to pharmacies has been relatively limited. This is now changing.”