Private GPs' Access to National Electronic Health Records

Mr Gerald Giam Yean Song asked the Minister for Health (a) to date, how many private general practitioner (GP) clinics have access to the National Electronic Health Records

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(NEHR) system; (b) what objections to adopting the NEHR have been received from GPs; (c) what are the main difficulties that current users of the system have reported; (d) what proportion of NEHR users is maintaining the same information in parallel on both NEHR and other systems like their own healthcare clusters' electronic medical records (EMRs) system; and (e) whether the delays in fully rolling out the NEHR will increase the risk of data integrity problems.

As of February 2015, about 550 (or 37% of 1,500) private GP clinics have access to the NEHR, up from about 190 in March last year.

In general, GPs find that access to the NEHR enables them to provide better care to their patients. Some GPs have not participated in NEHR due to a variety of reasons, including concerns over the necessary changes in day-to-day work processes, the impact on operational cost and unfamiliarity with IT. We will continue to engage with all user groups to address their concerns and make enhancements to NEHR to support the changing ways in which we deliver care.

The Member also asked about EMRs, which are detailed transactional records of a patient within a hospital. They allow the healthcare worker to enter clinical observations or assessments, order medication, make electronic orders for tests and review results and radiological images. For example, medication given to the patient during a stay in hospital would be contained within their EMRs but not within NEHR. In comparison, NEHR is a non-transactional record of the patients' health journey that contains the summary record of each healthcare encounter. For example, when a patient is discharged from hospital, the medications prescribed to them as part of their ongoing care will be sent to the NEHR. The discharge summary is also sent to the NEHR to ensure that any other clinician is able to understand critical and relevant information in order to facilitate better ongoing care for the patient. Clinicians enter information once into their local EMR system and the relevant information is automatically extracted and sent to NEHR.

As we roll out NEHR progressively, data will be collected progressively. In practice, a treating clinician would always verify with the patient and take the relevant history where necessary to ensure appropriate care is provided.