BS: Another 'Push for paperless NHS'

Subject: BS: Another 'Push for paperless NHS'
From: DMcG
Date: 07 Feb 16 - 04:16 AM

The BBC website reports another push for a paperless NHS, I see. Despite all the failings of previous attempts to do so beimg disasters, no minister seems to give a few minutes thought to why this is such an intractable problem. But even as someone outside the NHS the complexity of the undertaking and some of serious obstacles is obvious. For insiders it must be more so.
   
So yes, let's use technology to improve the NHS but let's set some more realistic and achievable objectives.

Subject: RE: BS: Another 'Push for paperless NHS'
From: Leadfingers
Date: 07 Feb 16 - 05:39 AM

So much for "Austerity" - Lets waste even more money !!

Subject: RE: BS: Another 'Push for paperless NHS'
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 07 Feb 16 - 06:24 AM

Most of the NHS is paperless. However, to use the term NHS is difficult. There is no organisation called NHS. There are lots of government owned, community partnership owned and privately owned organisations delivering NHS care.

Then there is The Data Protection Act 1995.

Then there is the problem getting clinical indemnity insurance where you need to access and make decisions on patients from other organisations' records.

Then there is.....

It isn't the lack of will, it's the lack of practicality. Try telling a GP practice where the partners have taken a big pay cut in year to buy in an IT system they were told was "compliant" to find a few months later that the local hospital has bought a system that means they need to spend lots more to speak to it.

If we had an NHS as a single organisation, it might be easy but we never have had. GP surgeries hold the "overall" record but they are all small private partnership companies and trust me, as someone involved in getting them to work together as federated concerns, it isn't easy.

I don't know what the answer actually is, but meanwhile, The NHS is 95% paperless already, doesn't need politicians trying to get the credit for the final 5% that isn't ever going to get there anyway and in any event, the issue isn't lack of paperless but trying to get paperless systems working together seamlessly.

For that, a reform of data protection legislation and a change of insurance rules will work far better than shouting at people with no money and both hands tied behind their backs.

I look forward to the day when an A&E consultant can look at an unconscious person from the other end of the country and know what medications they are already on, what chronic conditions they have and what might kill them through allergy if certain drugs are administered. What is concerning is that some people assume that to be already the case. But when the previous government tried it, it was construed as identity cards through the back door by journalists and the opposition. Back to square one.

Subject: RE: BS: Another 'Push for paperless NHS'
From: GUEST,#
Date: 07 Feb 16 - 08:39 AM

The old saw back when computers were first becoming popular (near the mid 1980s) was that they would make our lives easier and stop the glut of paper being used by businesses and industries, schools and health service providers, etc. It was bullshit then and it's bullshit now. Some things are facilitated more easily: Medics on crash/fire scenes who need a doctor's ok to provide life-saving interventions or drugs of various sorts that can't be administered without a doctor's approval; transfer of X-ray, MRI pics, etc., of a patient's condition; medical files. There are problems with it of course (electricity outages, computer crashes, incorrectly entered data) but the computer age has sped a few things up, including mistakes we make.

Subject: RE: BS: Another 'Push for paperless NHS'
From: GUEST
Date: 07 Feb 16 - 09:17 AM

Ok, it's the 21st century.. advanced technology and cost efficient budget savings and all that.
but if we have an entirely paperless NHS, when we do visit a hospital, what will they expect us to wipe our arses on !!!???

Subject: RE: BS: Another 'Push for paperless NHS'
From: GUEST,ripov
Date: 07 Feb 16 - 02:42 PM

Never mind paper, Barts hospital group (or whatever they call themselves now) say you should bring your own sanitary ware - and presumably a plumber to install it.