The Department of Health and Social Care (DH) has revealed that its goal to establish a single patient record with the inclusion of community pharmacy by 2028 may have been “overly optimistic”.
When the 10-year plan was published in July, it set out that “over time” community pharmacy would be “securely joined up to the single patient record”.
And while it didn’t give a specific deadline for when this would happen, it said that the government’s “ambition” was for patients to be able to view their single patient record – presumably with the inclusion of community pharmacy – “from 2028”.
But in a 10-year plan “impact statement” published earlier this week (January 12), the DH said that “establishing the single patient record is expected to take several years”.
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This timeframe estimation is based on “evidence from previous major digital programmes in the NHS”, it explained.
“It is possible that the project takes longer than expected, and the HM Treasury Green Book notes that there is a systematic tendency for project appraisers to be overly optimistic both in terms of costs and duration,” it added.
The DH also said that the “broad scope” of the single patient record means it will “require investment to ensure staff such as paramedics and community pharmacists have the same access to their patients’ data as those working in GP surgeries and hospitals”.
“Clinical resistance”
There is also a possibility that to “maximise” the value of the single patient record, medical terminology in care records would have to be translated into “plain English” to make them “readily understandable”, the statement said.
And it noted that while “many clinicians would support data sharing for the purposes of improving care”, there may be a risk of “clinical resistance” to changes to data sharing if safeguards are “perceived to be insufficient”.
But despite this, the DH acknowledged that by having access to a patient’s “whole record”, the clinical workforce – including community pharmacists – can make “more informed decisions that could improve outcomes”.
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It comes after the government said in the 10-year plan that a single patient record is “crucial to each of the three shifts”, facilitating a “more coordinated, personalised and predictive care model” of the neighbourhood health service.
The plan set out, among other things, that community pharmacies will “transition” from a focus on dispensing to “offering more clinical services” over the next five years.
