Phasing out of CDs

Let me clearly say here at the start that the N3i IG Team are passionate about fully utilising electronic systems and that asking anyone to print anything runs totally against our instincts. That is why this situation is very frustrating, however we are assured that after many years some work is being done to try to resolve it.

Having said that the use of CDs and USBs needs to be phased out as they are an inefficient and not very secure way to distribute information. We’re aware that some practices still use them to send data to another practice when a GP2GP transfer does not work, occasionally when sending records back to PCSE when a patient is deceased, and sometimes to a patient in response to a SAR. Lets look at each of these in turn:

GP2GP allows for a patient record to be transferred electronically between old and new practices when a patient moves. From recent work we have seen that whilst the concept is good the performance of the system itself needs to be addressed and we have fed back much of your comments to NHS Digital and asked them to review it. The transfer process for records is facilitated by PCSE and described here. Note this section in the guide, “What should I do if GP2GP transfer fails? If GP2GP electronic transfer fails or is not enabled (for example, when a patient transfers to Scotland), it is important that the electronic patient file is printed and added to the patient’s medical record before it is released to CitySprint.” Whilst PCSE will permit CDs and USBs to be added to the patient record during transfer they are not the approved method.

When a patient is deceased you will receive notification to send the record back to PCSE. At this stage the record must be printed as PCSE will not accept any electronic format. This has caused some issues with practices receiving requests for access to deceased patient records that should be dealt with by PCSE so it is important this step is followed.

New guidance from the ICO about SARs states that organisations can use an “accepted electronic format” to send a record to a requester. This can be a PDF document sent by email. So where CDs may have been used for this purpose the new secure NHS Mail option which can take files up to 5Gb should be used.This will be both more efficient and more secure.

If there are any other uses for CDs or USBs across primary care please let us know and we’ll be happy to review the processes involved. And finally please ensure you dispose of all those old CDs in a secure way.