Out-dated IT puts patients at risk

Doctors rely on information exchange

Patients are being put at risk by old fashioned computer systems in hospitals, say doctors.

A report by the British Medical Association's junior doctors' committee said information technology in UK hospitals had failed to keep up with changes in working patterns.

As a result information about patients could get lost in the system, potentially leading to misdiagnosis, delays in treatment and prolonged hospital stays.

Doctors said new rules imposing maximum working hours had made accurate information exchange more vital than ever before.

If these problems are not addressed there will be unacceptable risks to patients.

Simon Eccles

This is because the traditional on-call system has been replaced by a shift system.

Now doctors taking over at a change of shift can find themselves responsible for up to 100 patients they have not previously cared for.

In addition, changes in bed management practice can mean responsibility for a patient may alter several times a day.

The report says nurses find it difficult to know which doctor to contact in an emergency and hospital systems are often unable to produce a reliable list of patients under a doctor's care.

Instead, doctors frequently have to resort to typing their own patient lists on a home computer.

Simon Eccles, deputy chairman of the Junior Doctors' Committee, said: "The NHS urgently needs to develop systems that take changes to working patterns into account.

"If these problems are not addressed there will be unacceptable risks to patients."

The report recommends:

• an electronic directory linking doctors' contact details to their duty rotas
• hospital bleep systems to be replaced and doctors to carry mobile communication devices so they can distinguish between emergencies and unimportant requests
• development of systems to support the handover of critical patient information and outstanding tasks at shift changes
• piloting of technology to allow doctors to report results and order treatments from the patient's bedside
• better access to clinical information through hospital intranets and the National Electronic Library for Health