In my press release I mentioned a review of Coding for Success (the DH document published in 2007 advocating adoption of GS1 Standards (auto-identification and data capture (AIDC) technology, e.g. barcodes) to improve patient safety). I had planned for the review to be via a number of post sometime in the future, but the recent DH publication “Liberating the NHS: Report of the arm’s- length review” and E-Health Insider article yesterday “Judgement day arrives for CfH and NPfIT prompted me to draft this short post…
Item 3.60 in the DH report states “We propose to abolish the National Patient Safety Agency…” Although ”Some National Patient Safety Agency functions will become part of the remit of the NHS Board, while others will be supported to continue in other ways…”
It could be argued that the work undertaken by NPSA that resulted in publication of “Right Patient – Right Care” report in 2004 which stated “…on the basis of the work reported… there is considerable scope in the NHS for improving patient safety… through applying technologies such as barcodes, radio frequency identification, and biometrics”, was the for-runner to, and acknowledged in (2.2), Coding for Success. NPSA has continued to support the adoption of such technologies. Let us hope the drive to adopt AIDC to improve patient safety is not lost or ignored when NPSA is abolished and that if it is not within scope of the NHS Board that it “will be supported… in other ways”!
As for “Judgement day arrives for CfH and NPfIT”, it states “…CfH will disappear as a brand and the already much reduced agency will be dramatically scaled back… Many of the responsibilities of CfH are expected to be taken on by the Department of Health Informatics Directorate…”
As CfH contracted with GS1 UK to enable English trusts to receive ‘membership’ to support trusts adoption of GS1 AIDC standards (reportedly around 300 trusts now have this membership) and have established a number of projects that have shown where patient safety can be improved, let us hope that the DH Informatics Directorate will take over and continue this contract with GS1 UK, after all the Directorate’s “…Technology Office… focus [is] on standards and interoperability, together with ongoing management of contracts..”!