The vision laid out in the primary care model for Wales is based on individuals receiving care from a wider range of professionals, seamlessly, across organisational boundaries. Most stakeholders agreed that wider access to information in the GP health record is central to safe, effective and efficient care provision.
It was evident from those stakeholders representing non-general practice health professionals that current levels of access are variable across both professions and geographical areas.
Pharmacists said they can access a summary record and that having more detail would help them in their expanding role in primary care. Dentistry and optometry reported they currently have no access and need it to provide more effective and safer care.
Expanding records access
General Practitioners Committee Wales (GPC) said that extending summary records access to dentistry and optometry is planned. This still excludes community and allied health professionals. Representatives from these groups all stated that information sharing is the biggest challenge multi-professional working faces.
We learned that there is geographical variation in records access for community health professionals. For example, we heard that district nurses in one South Wales cluster we spoke to have full records access, whereas those in a neighbouring one have none. This is because access is controlled at an individual practice level.
We also heard that multiple conversations about an individual take place between professionals working for different organisations (for example, between GPs, paramedics, district nurses and occupational therapists) but there is no system for recording what happened in the discussion.