Record Access Collaborative
Dr Brian Fisher is a south London GP who helped set up The Records Access Collaborative to raise awareness nationally and internationally about the benefits of patient access to records and to and bring together those who have an interest in seeing record access more widely available.
He feels the UK is ahead of the rest of the world in delivering patient access to their full GP record. But he feels that US health organisations such as Kaiser Permanente and United Health have made much greater strides in opening up records to patients.
He says: “They have thousands of patients with access to records online and clinicians who are extremely enthusiastic about the benefits.”
The aim of the RAC is
- to raise awareness of record access (RA) nationally and internationally
- to make RA as useful to patients and health care professionals as possible by linking data to facilitate understanding and empower patients to share decisions if they want to.
- to increase the take-up of RA by patients and practices, with possible extension to other healthcare organizations such as outpatient departments and pharmacies
- to support the development of national standards for RA.
In a parallel development, members of the Records Access Collaborative are to draft standards for record access over the next few months which will then go out for consultation.
These will cover issues such as how clinicians should handle record access and sensitive details such as third party information in records and information about children.
Dr Fisher says the technology will also be adapted to meet clinicians’ fears about records access, for example by blocking access to any third party information in patients’ records up to the date access is first given.
He adds: “If practices are worried about it we will allow access to that information from a certain date and not before, with clear guidance about how GPs should handle these issues.”
Members of the Record Access Collaborative are also to make a submission to the World Health Organisation, arguing that patient access to records should be incorporated into WHO development plans.
The RAC is working with the GMC and other national organisations to write guidelines for record access for clinicians. We hope that this will make record access easier for clinicians as well as setting standards for the NHS as a whole.