Future Forum calls for clinical leaders

A clinician responsible for organising information to support better patient care should be identified in every NHS organisation, the NHS Future Forum has recommended.

The forum’s second phase report, published on Tuesday, says the barriers to making the information revolution a reality are “much more cultural than they are technological.”

“The kind of cultural change we want to see needs to be ‘championed’ at every level,” it says. “A clinician who is responsible for organising information in support of better patient care should be identified in every organisation.”

EHealth Insider has been campaigning for every NHS provider organisation to consider appointing a chief clinical information officer to lead on IT and using information to improve patient care.

The campaign has received widespread backing, and so far six CCIOs have been appointed.

The NHS Future Forum report also recommends that organisations should support the development of professional informatics skills and behaviours by encouraging the accreditation of informatics professionals and making sure that all staff have informatics skills.

“In order to ensure that all staff – including clinicians, general management and social care staff – understand and use informatics appropriately in daily activities, informatics needs to be fully included in education, training and continued development programmes across the sector,” it says.

The NHS Future Forum was originally set up to conduct a ‘listening exercise’ on the government’s NHS reforms. It has since gone on to do more detailed work on a number of areas, including integrated care, education and training, and information.

Former NHS chief executive Anthony McKeever worked on the forum’s information workstream for the latest report. He wholeheartedly agreed with its recommendations, especially in regard to having a clinical information leader in every organisation.

McKeever said the EHI CCIO Campaign was “absolutely spot on” and he hoped the recommendation would be in the information strategy, which is now promised in April.

In order to be effective, information systems needed to address the issues that mattered to those working on the ground and for that to happen, clinicians had to be involved from the start of the process, he said.

“Nobody understands health services better than clinicians,” he added. “There’s a need to bring information together in ways that make sense for patients and front line staff and that’s the natural person to be responsible for doing it.”

McKeever added that in his many years of experience of working in the NHS, every organisation had a clinician who was a leader in terms of IT and so could take on the role.

Forum chairman Professor Steve Field told EHI there were many reasons why the recommendations in the report, such as giving patients access to their records, had not been implemented despite years of government commitments and talk about what needs to be done.

“Clinicians are very, very busy at the moment and patients haven’t demanded it [online records access],” he said.

“This [report] is part of the culture change to moving from where we were in the past - where information was restricted and where information generally in society was power – through to a recognition that it’s the patient and the citizen who is the one that has the ill health and our role is more of a navigator/supporter working in partnership.”

The Department of Health has issued a response to the report, which also says that many of the issues highlighted will require cultural change.

“We are considering with interest the cultural barriers that the forum’s work hashighlighted and will set out next steps for overcoming them in the information strategy,” the DH said.