Wigan pharmacy pioneers SCR access

A community pharmacy in Wigan has become the first in England to gain access to the Summary Care Record.

The Bradshaw Street Pharmacy in Wigan is taking part in a project in NHS Ashton, Leigh and Wigan that aims to give SCR access to all the pharmacies in the PCT area that want it by the end of the year.

Vinod Patel, pharmacist at the Bradshaw Street site, said gaining access to live patient records was a big step forward for shared patient care and interdisciplinary working.

He added: “Pharmacy access to a patient’s medication history will be particularly valuable when responding to unscheduled requests from patients or for locums needing to verify unfamiliar patients’ records.”

Community pharmacy access to the SCR has been slow to get off the ground. Earlier plans for a project in NHS Bradford and Airedale, which wanted to test access for medicines use reviews, was halted by NHS Connecting for Health.

The NHS IT agency said it wanted to see access restricted to urgent and emergency care, in line with two reviews of the SCR's consent model and content conducted for the Department of Health.

David Holland, project manager for the SCR in NHS Ashton, Leigh and Wigan, told EHI Primary Care that the focus of its project was patients who were not familiar to pharmacists.

He added: “Patient safety is a key priority for the PCT and access to Summary Care Records can only improve our response to patients in an emergency situation or for those requiring urgent care, especially out-of-hours.”

The Bradshaw Street Pharmacy is using pharmacy software from Positive Solutions. The next stage of the project will see other pharmacies in the area using Positive Solutions software go live. They will be followed by sites using software from Rx Systems and Cegedim Rx.

He added: “There is a of lot of steps to go through because we are the first area in the country to do this, but hopefully that will make it easier for the rest of the country now we have done it.”

Holland confirmed that the PCT wanted to see all pharmacies who wanted to do so go live by the end of the year.

“We think that’s achievable and certainly all of the pharmacies I have visited to far are keen to do so, ” he added.

The focus on use of the SCR in urgent and emergency care means pharmacists will usually be looking for records on patients from outside their area.

However, Holland acknowledged that, with only 6m SCRs uploaded so far, there would be many occasions when a record is not available.

He added: “With 20-30,000 records being created every week there should be a lot more benefit in six to eight months. I’d rather they could get some benefit now than wait for three years before getting the maximum benefit.”

Martin Jones, commercial manager for Positive Solutions, said the company had been working closely with the Bradshaw Street Pharmacy and the PCT to test the system and iron out technical and access issues.

He added: “Our developers and engineers have been refining out Analyst PMR system to ensure that the access to Summary Care Records is logical and straightforward for pharmacy staff.

"We are now confident that we can smoothly roll out access to other sites in the near future.”