GPs may disrupt NHS National Programme

GPs are threatening not to cooperate with the National Programme for NHS IT if concerns about patient consent are not clearly answered.

The British Medical Association (BMA) GP IT committee has passed a motion that GPs 'should not engage with' the Care Records Service (CRS) at the heart of the £2.3bn programme.

Motions carried at a meeting earlier this month said that GPs 'deplore the announcement of a timetable for implementation before the enormous challenges have been adequately addressed' and 'have no confidence in the ability of the National Programme to improve patient care because of impossible timescales and lack of engagement with clinicians'.

If their questions are not answered, GPs will refuse to allow patient data from their systems to be used to populate the 'spine' being developed as the core of the national system.

'This is not about money or surgery systems, what we are concerned about is patient trust,' said Dr Paul Cundy, chair of the BMA GP IT committee.

'We want to know what data is being taken where, under what circumstances and for how long, and more importantly our patients want to know that. This has not been clear at any stage,' he said.

Patients have not been asked whether they are happy for their information to be transferred to the central spine, says Cundy.

'The National Programme has been saying for months it will run a public awareness campaign and has persistently failed to do so, despite the fact it's bought the system that will hold the data.

'There are a whole raft of issues - about attribution, liability, authentication, decision-making based on multi-contributory record - and these discussions have not been had,' he said.

A spokesman for the National Programme said: 'We recognise that important issues have been raised and that we should respond openly and constructively. We are seeking a meeting with members of the committee and we shall also shortly be announcing revised arrangements for clinicians and patients formally to inform the work of the National Programme.'