The NHS and information governance – not a good combination
The requirements pharmacies had to meet by the end of March were far from popular. And this week the subject has been on the agenda again, as PSNC and NHS Employers released a new patient consent form that pharmacists must use before delivering either MURs or the New Medicine Service.
The sector delivered on information governance in March, and I'm pretty confident that pharmacists will invest the time they need to with the new form, too, explaining things to patients so they can get the correct forms signed.
This is obviously a good thing, but it would be nice to think that while pharmacists are putting all that effort in, the NHS is following its own rules, too. Unfortunately, two major blunders this month suggest that the NHS has not been so strict when it comes to its own information governance standards.
Firstly, we heard that the NHS had put patients in danger by sending out letters with home security codes printed on the front of the envelopes. Then, more relevantly for our readers, NHS Prescription Services managed to send Kamsons Pharmacy's confidential payment schedules to a rival business.
Having worked on the Fight for Fairness campaign over the past few months, I thought I had heard it all when it came to payment horror stories. But this was a new one even to me and I'll be putting in some freedom of information requests to find out whether it was an isolated incident or one of many for the paymaster.
Whatever the results of those, though, it's clear that while pharmacists are expected to spend hours proving they are complying with onerous information governance requirements, the NHS just isn't upholding its end of the deal. I wonder if the Department of Health would like to comment? I'll let you know if they will.
Keep up to date with all latest on payment errors on the Fight for Fairness campaign page.
