By PM Polly

(Time to read: 3 minutes)

So last week, over 400 practices in Wales faced the deadline of choosing their new clinical system.

Half of those practices currently use EMIS, however, EMIS lost preferred vendor status in Wales so half of the practices in Wales having just dragged themselves through the last migration (OK it was four years ago but we’re still pressing buttons in the system we’ve got, and going – oh I didn’t know it did that!) have been being forced to make a choice between two completely new and different systems.

The demise of EMIS in Wales clearly came as a shock to both Vision and Microtest too, and something surely has to be done about these timelines in the future as they scrambled to put their systems together.  Neither product is ready in its entirety to see during roadshows and demonstrations, so in effect it was a bit like going to choose a dress for a wedding and seeing the buttons, a sleeve and a collar and having to guess whether this was the right colour, style and fit for you.  Then when you got to the wedding day and you realised that the skirt is too short and the sleeves are puffy and it’s luminous green you’ve got no choice but to wear the thing.

For five years.

As I read another complaint from a patient this morning because someone at the practice dared to be an actual human being and got something slightly slightly wrong, which made the patient sit down and type a letter, and worse tried to be humorous in it. I am left wanting to put a big advert on the TV that says something like… We don’t just see patients.

We also are faced with data protection changes that nobody can concisely and precisely tell us exactly what that means, resulting in most practice managers adapting 40-page policies, writing privacy statements and trying to decipher the difference between SAR and AMRA.  Nobody has a clue whether all of the sudden 11,000 patients are going to ask for their records which may all need to be redacted.  No patient understands that that could be a full-time job for five people and this could affect their care.  I want to tell patients about clinical governance assessment tools and information governance tools that we don’t really have time to fill in, but then if we don’t we are told we ‘might get a visit’.  I’d like patients to know that we are required to sit in cluster meetings trying to provide services to patients with little resources in order that, hopefully, their lives might be improved.  I’d like them to know about all the mandatory training everyone has to do, to make sure the service we provide is a good one.  I’d like them to see that nobody goes home on time and most GPs eat from a plastic container on their lap while triaging home visits.  I’d like them to know that when they shout and threaten us, it’s frightening.  I’d like them to understand we’re constantly trying to help.

I try to remain upbeat but this last two weeks, GDPR and a forced change in clinical systems has got to me.  We just want to look after patients!!

So who knows whether our practice will be fortunate and our decision for our new system may not result in the ill-fitting luminous green dress, perhaps we’ll be lucky and end up with a chic navy outfit.  That’s the point really.  We really don’t know.

By PM Polly