A. Providing high-quality healthcare is difficult. Health is information intensive and a person with an illness often has inputs from multiple providers and agencies: GP, hospital consultant, diagnostic services, pharmacy, physiotherapy, and others.
A single GP looking after a small patient list for a long time probably does not need a practice software system, but a large practice with multiple GPs, practice nurses and support staff, or a multidisciplinary primary care team, cannot survive without an information system. Paper can only be in one place at a time, and that is usually not the place it should be. Paper records cannot alert you to drug interactions, condition interactions or allergies as you prescribe for a patient with renal failure or a penicillin allergy. You cannot review your care of chronic illness with paper records, unless you wish to pull each file in turn and search for the quality indicators scattered throughout the chart.
In order to provide safe, high-quality care we need electronic health records. This could allow us to ensure that all test results are signed off when they are received, that previous x-rays and laboratory results are available when we review a patient, and that we know who else is looking after the patient.
The road to an electronic health record in Ireland will be a long one. Think 10 to 15 years at least with successive waves of resourcing and progress. GPs need to ensure that they are at the table, pushing the process on, ensuring that any new initiatives are interoperable with GP practice management systems and announcing to all who will listen what has been achieved in general practice IT over the last 15 years.
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