Charlotte Leslie – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Charlotte Leslie on 2016-03-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what estimate he has made of the (a) cost to GPs of and (b) average time taken per week by GPs for administration of the new Capita patient note transfer system.

Alistair Burt

Capita are improving the process for moving medical records between general practitioner (GP) practices. The changes will ensure that records can be fully tracked and traced through the movement process, to both increase the security of the record in transit and reduce the frustration for GP practices of waiting for records to arrive and not knowing where they are.

The service will continue to be provided to GPs for free.

In designing the new solution, Capita have engaged with GP practices via a stakeholder forum, user panels, observational studies and a National Engagement Team.

The user panels and observational studies have included consideration of any additional time taken to place medical records in secure pouches for transit. This needs to be considered against the time savings that GPs will make by no longer needing to chase records for which they are waiting, since they will be able to track these on the Capita system. Although we do not have a precise estimate, the studies indicate the new process takes a few seconds per record.

A national simulation was successfully completed during February 2016, and a live pilot is being undertaken in the West Yorkshire area during March 2016 to further test the solution ahead of national rollout.