“The whole GP community is seeing the advantages of joined up care.”

When patients from Ashfield's Primary Care Centre in Sandbach attend A&E or the out-of-hours service, the clinician caring for them is able to instantly access a real-time summary of their electronic record, thanks to a new project enabled by EMIS Web.

Dr Neil Paul’s surgery is one of 27 GP practices in Central and Eastern Cheshire PCT involved in the urgent care scheme, designed to give speedier access to vital medication information to enable clinicians from mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to give safer urgent care to patients.

“Before the system was introduced, it could take up to 15 minutes for the A&E doctor to get details over the phone or by fax – if indeed there was someone at the surgery to answer the phone and a GP to authorise it. Now it is done in seconds electronically, 24 hours a day, subject to secure data sharing agreements, which involve only key senior medical clinicians being able to view the data.” said Dr Paul.

The project allows two groups of senior clinicians to access relevant information from the GP record: A&E consultants and GPs providing out-of-hours care. They can view a summary of the record including active and significant past problems, and medication and non-medication allergies. “For example, a patient with a heart condition could be on ten different drugs and in some cases the medication could be causing the illness that they are presenting with in urgent care. It is vital for the doctors to know the same information as the patient’s GP so that they can give the right treatment,” said Dr Paul.

Individual patients can opt out of the scheme or refuse consent, although this may be overridden if a patient is unconscious. EMIS Web provides a full audit trail.

The project has only been running for sixweeks but Dr Paul said clinicians and their patients were already realising the benefits in terms of efficiency and improved care.

Further information

For more information about upgrading from an existing EMIS system, please contact us on 0845 123 4455 or email .

For information on moving to EMIS from another clinical system, please contact us on 0845 125 5536 or email .

 “We have had very positive feedback from A&E consultants, and the whole GP community is seeing the advantages of joined up care,”

Dr Neil Paul