Survey finds Bradford district service doesn't meet national standards (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

Survey finds Bradford district service doesn't meet national standards

9:55am Wednesday 3rd February 2010 in

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Patients are being put at risk by an out-of-hours-service which does not meet national standards, a report said today.

A review of systems used by West Yorkshire Urgent Care, which is funded by NHS Bradford and Airedale, among others, found patients were being put at “significant risk” of harm.

The service “does not functionally appear compliant” with rules laid down in 2006, the report said.

Lessons have not been learned from earlier cases, including that of London journalist Penny Campbell, who died from multiple organ failure in 2005 after consulting eight doctors over the course of four days.

A report into her death found serious flaws in the out-of-hours system, including doctors treating each of her calls as a fresh inquiry because they could not access each other’s notes.

West Yorkshire Urgent Care is made up of several providers including NHS Direct, private firm Care UK and not-for-profit group Local Care Direct.

The report said: “Inquiries and interviews with staff in all three providers identified a range of issues relating to information flows, updating of information in a timely fashion (and) availability of information to frontline clinicians.”

The review followed concerns by GPs about a system – SystmOne – used by West Yorkshire Urgent Care.

The study was written by Dr David Carson who said doctors had raised issues about “reliability, usability and patient safety” in connection with the mobile device supplied with SystmOne, which is manufactured by TPP.

The report said: “Within SystmOne it is not obvious when looking at the call that there may be previous episodes within the last 72 hours.”

Dr Carson said logging on to the mobile version had taken 15 minutes at night and GPs were forced to read tiny laptop screens using a six-point font.

He said gaps in the service meant doctors were hand-writing notes that should have been computerised and some patient records had still not been entered after a week.

A representative from West Yorkshire Urgent Care Services said: “Dr Carson’s review showed that there were some issues that we needed to tackle to make sure that we reduced clinical risk.

"These were issues which we had already been working on. Some of them have already been resolved, and an action plan is in place to make sure that we complete all outstanding actions promptly.”

In a statement TPP said there were errors in the report on SystmOne, but would not elaborate on what they were.