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NEWS: Michael Cross Electronic health records may not be available in secondary care until 2015 BMJ 2008; 336: 1153 [Full text]

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There are differences in Detailed Care Records - Lorenzo is a SSEPR!

Mary Hawking   (25 May 2008)

There are differences in Detailed Care Records - Lorenzo is a SSEPR! 25 May 2008
Mary Hawking, GP Kingsbury Court Surgery Church Street Dunstable LU5 4RS Send response to journal: Re: There are differences in Detailed Care Records - Lorenzo is a SSEPR!	The NAO seems uncertain about what a detailed care record is: is it - as in Millennium - an EPR (Electronic Patient Record) confined to a single Trust or hospital, or is it, like Lorenzo level 4, a Single Shared EPR (SSEPR) including all the medical records in a defined geographical area, i.e. hospital, community, GP, CHS (Child Health Services) etc? If we are to have SSEPRs in NME (North Midlands and East) (which, as far as I can see, implies no separate GP EPRs), and Millennium in London and Southern, what are the implications for patient care when the patient exercises choice and receives care outside their local area, or even across LSP or National boundaries? The effects on the NHS would seem to me to be unpredictable - and widespread. For instance, if all GP records in NME are subsumed into minor components in Lorenzo, what happens to QOF, QMAS, the funding of general practice under the new GMS contract - and all the statistics being fed to the Information Centre to inform policy and commissioning? Possibly fortunately, it looks as though we are some way off falling victim to the old curse - "May you get what you wished for!" as far as electronic patient records are concerned! Competing interests: None declared