Pharmacy bodies have urged the NHS to cut the bureaucracy involved in information governance, calling for a "radical simplification" of the online toolkit.

The information governance toolkit had become a tick-box exercise and was unlikely to result in any cultural change in data handling, PSNC, Pharmacy Voice and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society told the government this week.

Responding to a consultation on toolkit proposals from the NHS Commissioning Board, the organisations said it should be made simpler to reduce user frustration and push down the costs of red tape.

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	"There is scope for the process to be further simplified to increase efficiency and shift the focus away from information governance being an online tick-box exercise," the pharmacy bodies argued. "We believe there is scope for radical simplification, for example no more than one tick box per requirement to provide an assurance of compliance in that area."

The pharmacy bodies also called for more support in completing the toolkit, after receiving regular reports that the Exeter helpdesk had provided inadequate support levels, sometimes giving out inaccurate information.

And the organisations raised concerns about government proposals to give the public access to statistics on information governance performance. Since pharmacies were not required to achieve level three compliance, many would be likely to get a score of less than 75 per cent, which they said could fuel public mistrust of community pharmacy.

"While not objecting to the public having access to information that confirms an organisation meets information governance standards, the information provided must be clear, accurate and not open to misinterpretation," the representative bodies stressed.

Theys also warned against creating further bureaucracy in the drive to increase information sharing across the NHS. When sending information to other NHS providers, pharmacies should be able to trust that they had completed the toolkit and should not be required to check this, the organisations said.

"The bureaucracy that would be involved in this would drive up costs, both for pharmacies and other parts of the NHS, and would risk delaying appropriate care to patients," they said.

"It is essential that pharmacies can trust that all NHS providers have appropriate information governance standards in place, with the NHS having responsibility for monitoring and enforcing this."

The Department of Health launched the information governance consultation in November last year to assess the costs and benefits of the toolkit and to determine whether it remained fit for purpose and identify possible alternatives.