Patient Online deadline approaching – what you need to know

The London Patient Online team have asked us to remind practices that they are expected to allow patients access to their coded data within the GP record by 31 March 2016. This is a contractual requirement and builds on patient access to the summary record which was switched on last year.

Please note that you are only expected to offer this service to patients who request it and only if your practice clinical system supplier provides access. EMIS and TPP functionality is available now, Vision have stated that functionality will be available from late February.

The December 2015 LMC newsletter contained details of the process. There has also been an informative piece in the January 2016 LMC newsletter from Dr Phil Koczan, an east London GP and the Digital Clinical Champion for the Patient Online programme covering London.

Dr Koczan advises that practices trial detailed coded record access with a small number of patients to understand the system and ensure they have the correct processes in place to deliver a safe and effective service to their patients. Most practices enabled access to summary records last year. Piloting this more detailed patient record access with a small number of patients enables practices to open up access to the coded data in a staged and manageable way.

Experience from practices that have already enabled this access is that the initial demand is not significant and the level of access for an individual patient is dealt with on a case by case basis.

There is some configuration needed to enable the practice level setting and details of this are available from your CCG or CSU IT team, your clinical system supplier, or the London Patient Online clinical and implementation team (Dr Phil Koczan, phil.koczan@nhs.net, Richard Ince, richard.ince@nhs.net and Jane Nicholls, jane.nicholls6@nhs.net). The system suppliers have good on line help information that goes through the detail in an easy to understand way.

More information is available here:

Last updated : 17 Feb 2016

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