London Programme for IT
Using data to improve patient care
With the coalition's White Paper, ‘Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS' promising an ‘information revolution' more emphasis will be placed on the availability of data and comparative information.
As responsibility for commissioning patient care moves to new GP consortia, one change that GPs will begin to see is that aggregating and reviewing clinical data from GP systems and other sources will provide potentially rich information to support commissioning.
NHS Redbridge is already sharing aggregated clinical data and comparative patient costs for a geographic area with GPs.
This has allowed clinicians to identify high risk patients who may not be receiving optimal care, or fragmented care from multiple services.
Work is progressing to identify evidence based best practice indicators that can be easily recorded and measured, encouraging clinicians to implement best practice standards and improve consistency.
The next stage will be to expand the information available, incorporating data from the data warehouses used by RiO electronic patient record systems and social care, although there are information governance issues that need to be addressed.
Many PCTs within London are also looking at developing similar systems.
Dr Phil Koczan, clinical lead for NHS London Programme for IT and a GP in Waltham Forest, said: “GP commissioning is an excellent opportunity to make a significant difference to the NHS.
"However, it will require a significant change to the way we use data relating to patient care to help monitor and improve clinical standards, improve consistency of care and reduce duplication.
"It will also enable clinicians from all areas of the NHS to work together in a more collaborative approach for the benefit of patients.”
NHS Redbridge
NHS Waltham Forest
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