How many Mr Smith’s are in your neighbourhood?

Everyone knows someone with the surname Smith or Jones. It is a universally recognised fact that these are among the most popular surnames in the UK. But if you’re a PCT, keeping tabs on the right Mr. Smith to ensure a high level of service means the effective integration of horizontal systems.

This maybe a well recognised fact, but integration plans in Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) have been in limbo for the last few years. When the NHS Connecting For Health programme was rolled out, all the PCTs had to do was wait and then Local Service Providers (LSPs) would provide them with a solution that would enable them to integrate records across their internal systems as well as connect with the Spine.

Five years on and the LSP programme is stalled. Fujitsu are supposed to be suing the NHS and a couple of other LSPs have dropped out because they have been unable to get satisfaction from the programme - iSoft was apparently driven to the point of near bankruptcy. But against the backdrop of commercial wrangling, the question is where does this leave PCTs? Answer: Looking at what systems they have in place and how they can link them up in the same way that the LSPs were expected to do.

The main problem that PCTs can address through integration, in the first instance, is the ability to keep better track of patients. This has previously been fraught with difficulty because individuals lack an easily obtainable unique identifier. The potential exists in the form of an NHS number, but few people know theirs. Therefore PCTs could have several records for one patient. Not being able to integrate that data can have risky consequences. For example, a doctor might prescribe a treatment not realising that a patient is being treated elsewhere.

The good news is that every patient’s NHS number is actually available via the Patient Demographics Service (PDS). The challenge for PCTs is getting that unique number from the PDS to populate their systems in order to eradicate duplications and drive efficiencies, without connecting everything to the NHS Spine. How Quicksilva is helping PCTs tackle this challenge is by connecting one or two core systems to the PDS and creating internal infrastructure links that then populate other applications with the data they require in order to ensure patient information is well integrated and consistent.

Data cleansing is the short term objective of horizontal integration, but the long term view is that this connectivity will underpin the delivery of a patient journey where, when an individual goes from a A&E, to triage, to X-ray and then back to their GP, that their data will follow them through that journey to better inform the decisions made about their care.

Right now it might seem like a painful process, but there are great economies of scale to be realised through better integration and the eradication of multiple records. This is the first of many small, yet vital, steps towards reaching the ultimate goals in patient care.