One of my first blogs discussed concerns that English family physicians have with the National Health Service’s National Programme for IT.  Nearly two thirds of those polled said that they would boycott the patient health record database because they were not convinced that their patients’ health information would be secure online.  Now it turns out that there is also an accuracy problem with the electronic health record (EHR) system.  The Daily Mail Online  reports that ten percent of EHRs on a pilot version of the system have not been updated to reflect changes in the patients’ medical conditions, which includes changes in their medications or additional allergies that they may have acquired.  The level of errors was revealed at a meeting of managers of the pilot project in Birmingham. 

Dr. Robert Morley, a doctor in Birmingham and a member of the British Medical Association’s (BMA) General Practitioners (GP) Committee,  expressed his concern -  “Across the country we have been told that around two million records have been uploaded.  If that rate of inaccuracies is repeated nationally – and we have no reason to see why not – we’re talking about 200,000 patients.”  The BMA called on the Ministers to suspend the project, a £600 million ($915.54 million in US dollars according to the Google currency converter) “scheme” called the Spine, wherein a doctor uploads his patient’s Summary Care Record onto the national database which is then accessible by other doctors across the country, if they need medical information about that patient in an emergency situation.  If this Record has not been updated to reflect a change in medication, a reaction to a medication, or a new allergy, the patient could suffer serious health consequences. The GP committee wants the Spine suspended immediately until the safety issues have been “fully investigated and satisfactorily resolved”. 

The accuracy problem is felt to stem from either the doctor’s Smartcard not working properly because of  IT problems with the scheme and/or the doctor not being able to authenticate his Smartcard because he is working “out of hours”.  (The Smartcard is what allows a doctor to access, post to and update a patient’s EHR.) 

As we develop our own National Health Information Technology system here in the U.S., we should look to England to learn from their negative (AND positive!) experiences with their system.