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Fewer than one in 10 GP practices offers patients access to their records in several areas of England, with significant variation across England, six months ahead of a new deadline.
An internal NHS England document, seen by HSJ, shows six integrated care boards have one in 10 or fewer practices offering access. They are: Herefordshire and Worcestershire, Coventry and Warwickshire, Kent and Medway, North East London, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough and Northamptonshire.
Meanwhile, only two ICBs had more than half of their practices with patient record access: Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire; and Dorset.
It comes ahead of a revised deadline of 31 October for all practices to allow this access via the NHS App. A previous deadline last year was delayed, amid a standoff between the GP profession and government/NHSE.
The primary care recovery plan, published this week by the government and NHSE, said that more than 90 per cent of GP practices should allow their patients full use of the NHS app by March 2024. Only about 20 per cent currently do so.
Devon in distress
Think of a challenged health economy, and Devon will likely be among the first to spring to mind.
The integrated care system has had a tough time in recent years, evidenced by the heavy regulatory burden that has hung over it since NHS England’s “success regime” programme in the middle of the previous decade.
That picture looks set to continue in 2023-24, with the ICS submitting an operating plan which is unlikely to satisfy the lords and masters at NHS England – HSJ reported yesterday.
NHS Devon’s plan fails to meet the 65-week waiting time elimination target by March 2024, fails to meet the requirement for ICSs to break even financially, and fails to meet NHSE’s “unambitious” temporary emergency care target for four-hour waits in emergency departments.
The problems in Devon are clearly complicated and deeply embedded in the system, despite the best efforts of local chiefs.
Whatever NHSE may think of Devon’s plan, the ICS has made it clear that it cannot commit to delivering what the regulator wants.
And perhaps it’s best to be upfront about that, rather than toe the line and subsequently deliver the bad news later in the year.
Also on hsj.co.uk today
In London Eye, Ben Clover reports that a coroner has issued about as damning a verdict as possible against a mental health trust in the capital. And in news, we report that up to 10 junior doctor posts will be reinstated at a small district general hospital after regulators agreed it had improved its learning environment.
