Facilitator Handbook 2005 - PRIMIS

Primary Care Data Uses and Abuses
PRIMIS Facilitator Handbook
Primary Care Data Uses and Abuses
Background
“Healthcare is an information-rich activity, in that it involves the collection, use and
disclosure of large quantities of sensitive personal data. Such information is not only
required by health professionals directly involved in patient treatment, but also the
many groups who indirectly contribute to the delivery of quality healthcare.
Administrators, policy makers, researchers, educators, public health bodies and
auditors are just some of the groups that require access to patient data to ensure that
high quality, cost-effective medical treatment is delivered in a timely and appropriate
manner. Making this information available, without compromising the patients’ rights [to
privacy], is a complex task.”
Medical Records Use and Abuse, Heidi Tranberg and Jem Rashbass
Better information leading to better health and care for every patient is at the heart of the
National Programme for IT. With programmes such as the NHS CRS, which aims to transform
the way health and social care information is managed by giving health and care professionals
access to patients’ information where and when it is needed, the emphasis on data and
information within the NHS has never been greater. It is recognised that currently health
information is held as a mixture of paper-based and computer records that cannot easily be
shared. Even records held electronically are effectively ‘locked away’ on computers that cannot
talk to one another.
Although great progress has been made over recent years, we are still some way from the
ideal of a fully integrated health care record. In the meantime, for healthcare information to be
used for planning purposes, it is imperative that the data, the building blocks that together can
give the required information, are accurate. Additionally, the way in which the information is
interpreted needs to take into account the sources of data and the methods of recording and
extraction. The aim of this module is to help information facilitators and other PCO staff
understand how to use aggregated primary care data appropriately and avoid some of the
common pitfalls.
The Training
The training takes place over a full day and is run on either an individual scheme or a group
workshop basis. It is open to PCO staff as well as PRIMIS information facilitators. It comprises
presentation, discussion and group work exercises on the following topics:
The information management cycle
This explores the difference between data and information and how the same information can
be interpreted differently when viewed away from the context of direct patient care.
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