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UCL published its report last month on the Summary Care Record (SCR). UCL reported that "as of 1 March 2010, of the approximately 8.5 million people who had been sent information about the SCR, 0.65% had opted out. 1.2 million SCRs existed and 14,266 had been accessed. SCRs were being accessed in 4% of all encounters and in 21% when an SCR was available. This varied considerably depending on setting, the type of clinician and their level of experience. Fewer then 30 SCRs were being accessed in secondary care settings per week across the country."
One of the findings was that despite some progress (since the 2008 Early Implementer Evalutation report), the anticipated benefits of the SCR have yet to be realised in full. For example, the UCL report stated that :
-SCRs sometimes contain inaccuracies (e.g. incomplete medication lists or missing allergies), but that clinicians use their judgement when interpreting such data and take account of other sources of information including the patient.
- The evaluation did not directly demonstrate an improvement in patient safety but the findings were consistent with a rare but important impact of the SCR on reducing medication errors.
-SCR was not associated with the hoped-for reduction in consultation length, nor did it appear to reduce hospital admission.
However, the report did stress that this finding needs to be tempered by the fact that the SCR is an evolving technology at an early stage of implementation.
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