Devolution, ETP and incomplete medical records: causes and effects
More questions than answers arise from Martin Strange’s
examination of some of the details of community pharmacy dispensing in
the context of England’s plans for shared-care records and the
electronic transmission of prescriptions (ETP) from primary care
prescribers to community pharmacists, particularly where patients move
across the UK’s home-country borders.
abstract
The completeness of patients’ medical records on the English national
system will be most affected by across-border patient flows into and out
of Wales and Scotland. This lack of completeness could affect patients’
safety and distort issues of professional liability unless well
understood. Primary care prescribing and community pharmacy dispensing, a
major current clinical activity across these borders, may be restricted
through possible incompatibility of the proposed electronic systems
because mutual compatibility is currently out of the scope of the systems
designers.
This article flags up some of the as yet unresolved difficulties that
will arise from the electronic transmission of prescriptions through the
English national care-records system, both within England and at its
borders.
Br J Healthcare Comput Info Manage 2004; 21(8): 23–5.
