BBC medical records story

[Kit Lane]

Isn't that a bit of a worrying admission in its own right?  By your own
figures, the hospital cannot provide nearly 1 in 5 requests for information.
Is it that they allocate a certain amount of time for each request and thus
fail to "find" it within say 15 minutes, or is it that they are actually
lost / stolen / destroyed / whatever?  Its a bit worrying really - that
implies that (assuming you applied it nationally) somewhere around 13
million people have no medical history.  I am thinking that those 13 million
are likely to contain a lot of people with medicine allergies (presumably
the one real *major* problem caused by lack of notes, as I guess injecting
an unconcious person with something that will make them better that then
kills them is probably a big no no =)

Kit Lane
IT Systems Administrator,
RCAHMW

-----Original Message-----
From: ukcrypto-admin@chiark.greenend.org.uk
[mailto:ukcrypto-admin@chiark.greenend.org.uk]On Behalf Of Adrian
Midgley
Sent: 18 March 2002 14:23
To: ukcrypto@chiark.greenend.org.uk
Subject: Re: BBC medical records story


On Monday 18 March 2002 02:33, you wrote:

> The idea of the NHS bureacracy looking after my medical records is, IMO, a
> "complete non-starter". But that is how they are looked after.

Not really.  I look after my patients' medical records, by employing a
manager and receptionists to do so, and administering a computer storage
system for the electronic part of it.  Nobody else administers my system at
present, nor runs queries against it, although they'd like to.

The local hospitals have a records department, and in all but 17% or so of
cases they manage to find their records.


> - --
> Ben Clifford     benc@hawaga.org.uk     GPG: 30F06950
> http://www.hawaga.org.uk/ben/

--
From one of the Linux desktops of Dr Adrian Midgley
http://www.defoam.net/