NHS England announces preferred supplier of health and justice information services procurement
New information system set to improve continuity of care to population with complex health and social care needs.
Patients in the Health and Justice Sector are set to benefit from improved continuous healthcare with a new contract being conditionally awarded to The Phoenix Partnership (TPP), to supply the Health and Justice Information system in places of detention.
The new system will be launched from July 2016 and will mean patients in Prisons, Immigration Removal Centres, Youth institutes and Secure Children’s homes will no longer have to wait for their medical records to be faxed over by their GP.
They will now, for the first time, be able to register for General Medical Services with healthcare providers in their secure facility.
Health Care Providers will then have access to the patient’s community records and those with complex health and social needs will benefit from continuous care that is managed faster and more appropriately. These records can then be securely transferred back to a GP when the patient returns to the community, which will allow patients to benefit from uninterrupted care for long term conditions.
Dr Jake Hard, Clinical Lead for the project, Prison GP and chair of the Royal College of GPs Secure Environments Group, said – “This represents a significant step forward in supporting and promoting the continuity of care for those people who come into contact with the criminal justice system. The new developments will for the first time contribute to a more inclusive approach to providing health care in these settings and further support the clinicians providing care to their patients.”
The Health and Justice Information Services Programme has been in development for over three years and has been delivered by NHS England and The Health and Social Care Information Centre in partnership with Public Health England, The Youth Justice Board, The Ministry of Justice and The Home Office along with independent charitable partnerships. The programme aims to support the National Offender Management Service in improving outcomes for detainees, their integration back into society and reduce re-offending.
Kate Davies, NHS England’s National Director for Health and Justice, said: “This is an important milestone in supporting the continuation of care and support to all adults, children and young people in the criminal justice system. It will allow clinical information and records to transfer between the community GP and the secure environments enabling and supporting quality healthcare for all.”
6 comments
As a member of the Lived Experience Team I think this is a great move and long overdue.
Will this system be available to access by health care providers in police custody facilities as well?
1. Does the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act allow this?
2. If a patient/offender leaves custody and registers with a GP (or other health provider) not using TPP SystmOne, will records be transferred via GP2GP? & if so, what happens to the Prison TPP medical record?
3. if the patient registers with a S1 practice, either on discharge or in the future, will the medical records created while in custody become part of the cradle-to-grave record – and permanently available?
My understanding has been that information recorded in custody may not be transfered into the permanent GP records to prevent patients having a permanent and reasonably public record of having been in custody. Has policy on this changed, and if it has, could we have the reference please?
Great that we will finally get patient records, this will undoubtedly assist continuity of care.
SystmOne, however, is a complex, cumbersome and rigid primary care computer system, rendered even slower and more problematical by the recently introduced prison prescribing module. We now have to address this challenge by encouraging system developments to make S1 more fit for purpose in increasingly busy prison healthcare departments….but will TPP have any incentive at all to listen to frontline clinicians now the contract has been awarded to S1 in its present form? We have to recruit and retain doctors, nurses and administrative staff in order to continue to provide a good service in Prison Healthcare. NHS England should understand that the provision of an intuitive, fast and efficient clinical care system is vital in achieving this aim, and should be prepared to lend its support to front-line clinicians campaigning to make S1 more efficient and user-friendly than it presently is.
This is truly good news for all concerned and will have genuine beneficial implications for the patients
This is excellent news and a really important development in driving forward the development of high quality care for people in prisons and other prescribed places of detention. It will address current challenges around continuity of care and enable more rigorous evaluation of health needs and inform commissioning of services to meet those needs. England is the only country in Europe that will have the capability of collecting information across the entire residential custodial estate and this confirms our leadership internationally in health and justice.