The British Medical Association’s GP committee is locked in a disagreement with NHS England over the roll out of digital record updates that allow pharmacies to automatically share data from clinical consultations with their local surgeries. 

The General Practice Committee (GPC) told practices on Friday June 28 that they should switch off the GP Connect Record Update function “with immediate effect” after it claimed to have learned that NHS England was taking steps to prevent surgeries from disabling the function, which has been rolled out across pharmacies’ IT systems since March. The GPC had previously considered switching off the function as part of industrial action set to begin on August 1.  

Dr David Wrigley, the GPC’s deputy chair and digital lead, said the organisation is “concerned about changes that allow others to add diagnoses, observations and medications” and about the “unilateral” imposition of these changes without consulting doctors. 

Dr Wrigley added: “These changes could have unintended consequences and add further pressure to the GP needing to ensure follow up and ongoing care is provided to the patient due to other clinicians’ decisions and actions.

“This will include more requests for follow-ups and support for patients to work initiated by others outside the practice team.”

At present GP Connect records Pharmacy First consultations only, with plans to extend this to pharmacy hypertension checks and contraception consultations in the near future. 

Dr Wrigley said the GPC is “not saying ‘no’ to this development, just ‘not yet’”.

He also claimed to have received confirmation from IT providers EMIS and TPP that NHSE had instructed them “to remove the functionality to disable GP Connect Update Record directly” and that this was to be implemented “imminently”. 

NHSE denies these claims, saying in a letter to GP surgeries yesterday (July 2) that it is “inaccurate to suggest that there are any imminent changes being made to stop GPs switching off GP Connect functionality if they wish to”. 

Dr Amanda Doyle, NHSE’s national director for primary care, told GPs that the new Update Record functionality is a “significant improvement to existing processes” that removes the need to “manually reconcile information from NHS Mail into the patient record” and that surgeries “are already providing positive feedback”. 

Dr Doyle emphasised that the new function is not intended for “any clinically urgent, safeguarding or time-sensitive information” and that pharmacies must use “their existing methods” to raise these issues with GP practices.

Alastair Buxton, director for NHS services with Community Pharmacy England, described the BMA’s attitude as “counterintuitive”.

Mr Buxton said: “If GP practices choose to switch off GP Connect: Update Record, then pharmacy IT systems will automatically revert to using the NHSmail system that has been used for many years to send post-event messages to general practices. 

“The activation of Update Record has only happened in the last few weeks for Pharmacy First, the Hypertension Case-finding Service and the Pharmacy Contraception Service, with the associated reduction in the need to use NHSmail as the route that IT systems transmit post-event messages. 

“Its introduction was intended to reduce workload in general practices, as information on consultations provided in pharmacies doesn’t have to be manually copied into records from emailed PDF documents. 

“Like community pharmacy teams, we know general practices are also feeling the strain of increasing demand with little support in return, so it does seem counterintuitive to switch off functionality designed to reduce administrative workload at practices and improve patient safety.”