Janet:
Minister, I do actually acknowledge the work that you have undertaken to digitalise some patient records through the Welsh community care information system. However, serious problems do remain. During a recent meeting of elected Members in north Wales with the health board, there was unanimous support for the need to take action to address the fact that hospitals are simply not able to communicate with each other. For instance, if I was to go into Ysbyty Gwynedd with an issue, and perhaps I'd been in Ysbyty Glan Clwyd a couple of weeks ago, the notes in Bangor wouldn't pick up on the fact. In other words, the hospitals don't talk to one another. The health board chief exec and the chairman of the board have said it's a real problem when wanting to deliver safe and practical healthcare.
But in addition to hospitals struggling, I know that care homes are struggling to access patient information too, and nursing homes. That just sounds in this day and age really bizarre, and this could actually be negatively affecting over 15,000 people aged 65 or over who actually are residing in care homes. So, what consideration have you given to ensuring that our care homes and nursing homes are able to tap into the health systems on their patients, and also that they have relevant access to digital patient records and that, most importantly, we do have clear digitalised information that is able to translate across all our hospitals.
Minister for Health and Social Care:
There are two quite different things that the Member said there. One is about making sure that parts of our healthcare system can talk to each other—in particular, in the hospital-based part of the system. That certainly is work that is ongoing with further investment and expectations being made, and I've actually seen examples of innovation in exactly this space on my recent visit to north Wales.
The second point you made I think is rather more confusing and, actually, to make sure that we get a proper answer, it might be helpful to be really clear about what the Member's asking for. So, I'd ask you to follow up in writing, because access to care homes, and who in a care home has access to that—well, you need to understand who that actually is. Are you talking about registered healthcare professionals providing direct care or healthcare, or are you talking about the management level? It's really important to understand who has ownership of that data, if it's the person, and how that data is shared, and our systems to allow that to be undertaken, with proper information governance around that. It might be helpful if the Member wrote to me on the particular issue that she sees, and then I'll get her a proper answer to deal with that.
