Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt yesterday welcomed the launch of the Royal College of General Practitioners‘ patient online access roadmap, which provides guidance to support GPs in providing online access for patients.
The roadmap covers online transactional services such as the booking and cancelling of GP appointments and the ordering of repeat prescriptions. It is a means by which patients can improve engagement with their GP practice and become more involved in choices about their own healthcare.
The guidance looks at the principles of online access to records by patients, steps to offering access, and the principles around training, education and support for GP practices to help them to do this. Issues around information governance, including third party data and GP workload are taken into account.
The Health Secretary said:
“I have set a challenge to the NHS to go paperless by 2018. That means embracing the many benefits that technology can bring so NHS staff spend time with patients not paperwork, and patients get the 21st century services they expect.
“I am delighted that the Royal College of General Practitioners has led this work to help give patients better electronic access to GP services. Appointments, prescriptions and test results can and should be only a click away. Records – which help patients work in partnership with their doctor to manage their care – also need to be easily accessible.
“This roadmap is a fantastic guide to how we are going to make this happen and I applaud the professional and patient groups that have been involved in putting it together.”
Watch this video from The Telegraph of Dr Arvind Madan of the Hurley Group talking about online access to GP services:
This should of been done years ago we are too slow in the UK