Electronic prescribing and the safety of electronic communication between GPs and healthcare services has been improved with the publication today of an update to the Health Information and Quality Authority’s General Practice Messaging Standard.

The GP Messaging Standard specifies the structure and content of electronic messages. It aims to standardise the transmission of these electronic messages between general practices, secondary care and out-of-hours care, leading to safer better health information in Ireland.

HIQA’s Acting Chief Executive and Director of Health Information, Professor Jane Grimson, said: “This Standard addresses the need to standardise the information shared between GPs and other health professionals, such as hospital consultants, leading to reduced errors in information flow and better outcomes for patients.

“The Standard will mean that consistent, understandable and trustworthy information is exchanged, helping health practitioners to make decisions for their patients that are based on the best available evidence.”

The GP Messaging Standard outlines the way patient information, ranging from blood test results, diagnosis information, referrals and X-rays, can be more accurately and safely transferred between healthcare services.

This Standard was first approved by the then Minister for Health and Children in May 2010. This new version, 3.0, has been developed to include the messaging requirements for the electronic transfer of prescriptions between GPs and community pharmacy. It is also relevant for prescribing in outpatient departments of hospitals. This new version of the Standard goes further to reduce medication errors, leading to safer, better care.

This Standard forms part of HIQA’s work through its health information function to ensure that high quality health and social care information is available to support the delivery, planning and monitoring of services throughout Ireland.

 An outline summary and a full copy of the Standard is available here.

ENDS

Further Information: 

Sinead Whooley, Communications Manager, Health Information and Quality Authority, 01 814 7488/ 087 9221941swhooley@hiqa.ie

Notes to the Editor: 

• Benefits of the Standard to frontline healthcare providers (for example, GPs) include:
  • more efficient and effective delivery of care by removing the need to wait for the exchange of paperwork, records etc. by having immediate access to online patient information
  • a reduction/removal of the need for duplicate and unnecessary repeat testing
  • earlier diagnosis and faster commencement of appropriate care complete, accurate and searchable patient information at the point of care delivery.
• This Standard was developed in conjunction with input from a wide range of stakeholders including frontline healthcare providers, healthcare experts and decisionmakers who will continue to be involved as we further develop the standards for implementation. This group has worked together since 2009 to:
  • agree to adopt, adapt or develop a general practice messaging standard
  • make recommendations on a mechanism for testing conformance to the standard
  • make recommendations on a mechanism for amendments, version control, and timescale when the standard should be formally reviewed.
• Under the Health Act 2007, the Authority has responsibility for researching and making recommendations on the best use of health information within the system to increase patient safety and efficiency of care. The GPMS project falls under this mandate and has, as its core objective, an extensive analysis of international best practice in the area.