Primary Health Care

GP2GP Patient Records Transfer

What is GP2GP?
The general practice to general practice patient records transfer (GP2GP) project aims to provide capability to all general practices to electronically transfer electronic medical records safely, securely and in a way that retains content and meaning.

At the moment, if you transfer to a new general practice you can request your medical record to be transferred as well. Your medical record is printed or photocopied then mailed to your new practice which then has to re-enter the information from the paper record into the practice’s electronic patient or practice management system (PMS).

GP2GP will allow different PMS systems to ‘talk to’ each other. This means your medical record can be electronically transferred from your previous general practice to your new provider.

How will GP2GP work?

Diagram that shows how GP2GP Patient Records Transfer will work.

Diagram that shows how GP2GP Patient Records Transfer will work.

What will be transferred?
GP2GP will transfer your entire medical record in a structured and searchable format, but a core subset of the record will be transferred ‘field-to-field’. This core subset is expected to include:

basic demographic information
diagnoses and medical history
encounters (consultation notes)
immunisation, injection, and screening events
current and past medications
allergies and alerts warnings
procedures (minor surgery, medical interventions etc)
family and social history
recall items (queued reminders for screening appointments)
other documents including lab/radiology results, outpatient/discharge letters etc.

What are the potential benefits of GP2GP?

Benefits to patients

Towards a Person Centred Information Environment in Primary Care
Patient benefits will include improved health outcomes, improved clinical decision-making, reduction in errors, and more involvement in their own healthcare.
GP2GP will mean medical history is less likely to be lost when a person changes their provider. It will also ensure the person’s most important health information is available to their new provider.

General practices have expressed concerns about the lack of clinical information for new patients. Patient safety is at risk if clinical decisions are made without critical information held by the patient’s previous provider.

The lack of information on medications prescribed by other providers is a key area of concern. This increases the risk of accidental harm due to unforeseen drug interactions or reactions. It also increases the risk of treatments being ineffective when medications prescribed by different providers have opposing effects, or one provider prescribes a drug already proven ineffective by another provider.

GP2GP will give general practices timely and full access to their new patient’s electronic medical record. General practices will know their new patient’s current medication, allergies, existing problems and past medical history. This will lead to improved clinical decision-making as the right care can be provided by the new provider at the right place and at the right time. GP2GP will reduce the risk to patient safety during the handover of care.

The number or transcription errors or omissions caused by re-entering patient information will be significantly reduced through electronic transfers.

Being able to access a person’s previous clinical history will also reduce the number of duplicate lab tests, which can be uncomfortable and inconvenient.

Benefits to General Practices

Towards a Provider-Friendly Information Environment in Primary Care
General practices will benefit from spending less time printing and mailing an outgoing patient’s medical record, and re-entering an incoming patient’s record. Patient records will also be presented in a format that is structured, easy to read and searchable. Key pieces of information can be located more efficiently than thumbing through reams of scanned pages that may not be legible.

Less time spent ordering duplicate tests and capturing patient information that has already been captured elsewhere will improve interaction with patients.

Benefits to the Health Sector

Reducing the number of duplicate tests and the improvement in health outcomes will also benefit the health and disability system by cost savings and increased system performance. The interoperability standards that GP2GP will develop and implement can also be used by other sector e-event initiatives including electronic hospital discharges, e-Referrals, provider-to-provider and the Primary Care Minimum Dataset.

Who is involved in GP2GP?
The project is clinically-led with strong sector representation. The project steering group which leads and governs the project is made up of the following people.

Project Business Owner and Steering Group Chair
Dr Jim Primrose	Chief Advisor - Primary Care Sector Capability & Innovation Directorate Ministry of Health
Project Senior Supplier
Dr Zoran Bolevich	Group Manager - Information Strategy & Architecture Information Directorate Ministry of Health
Project Senior User Group
Barbara Fredericksen	Practice Manager Mercury Bay Medical Centre (nominated by PMAANZ)
Chris Petersen	Primary Care IT Liaison Hawke’s Bay PHO (nominated by Hawke’s Bay DHB)
Colleen O’Connell	Practice Nurse North Avon Medical Centre (nominated by College of Practice Nurses)
Fiona Thomson	Acting General Manager IPA Council of NZ (nominated by General Practice Leaders’ Forum)
Dr Richard Medlicott	General Practitioner Island Bay Medical Centre (nominated by Primary Care Information Management Group)
Dr Sandra Hicks	General Practitioner Halswellhealth (nominated by Pegasus Health)
Susan Iversen	Director Karo Data Management Ltd (nominated by Healthcare Aotearoa)
Dr Tim Cookson	General Practitioner CityGPs (nominated by Medical Protection Society)
Dr Tim Gardner	General Practitioner Outram Medical Centre (nominated by HISAC)

GP2GP Consultation documents
Draft User Requirements for Sector Consultation

GPs, practice nurses, practice managers and others involved with health information are now being asked to provide input to the draft user requirements.

The user requirements were drafted by the project steering group. They will form the basis of the design of GP2GP and detailed planning for the project. The project team would like to test these requirements with the general practice community.

View document
GP2GP Patient Records Transfer Project: Draft User Requirements for Sector Consultation (Word, 1 MB)

Provide feedback
The Draft User Requirements for Sector Consultation document will be open for feedback until 4th September 2009. If you would like to provide feedback, or suggest changes to this document, please use the form below to document and submit your comments or feedback.

Feedback Form - GP2GP Draft User Requirements (Word, 162 KB)

Contacts
Please contact the GP2GP Project Team at gp2gp@moh.govt.nz or contact a team member:

Project Business Owner	Dr Jim Primrose	jim_primrose@moh.govt.nz
Project Manager	Rommel Anthony	rommel_anthony@moh.govt.nz

Postal address:

Rommel Anthony
Project Manager - GP2GP
PO Box 5013
Wellington

Page last updated: 26 August 2009