What is it with the NHS and email?

[Morat]

Mrs Morat has a regular prescription and has just re-ordered. Since we moved away from the surgery are no longer allowed to use their dispensary and have to use one in town. OK.. anti-monopoly makes sense.
Until this month the surgery used to fax (!) the prescription through but the NHS has recently decided they're going to join the modern age and ditch fax machines. So... now they post prescriptions to the Chemist.
Post as in stamp and envelope post.
It's progress, Jim....

[hellymedic]

My prescriptions are sent by Electronic Magick to the pharmacy of my choice two furlongs hence.

I nominated my pharmacy with the practice. My pharmacy was formerly the local branch of Boots but is now a perfumery that does not stock Chanel.

[Morat]

I think your surgery needs to speak to our surgery - as soon as we can send you a pigeon.

[hellymedic]

[OT] I heard fax-warble today. I phoned the number from which the Premier Inn at Horsham Town Centre had phoned me and got the handshake.
It had been a long time.

You might get this if you called my landline on a bad day...

[Kim]

Hang on, I thought the originating fax started the handshake?  Opposite of modems, where the recipient begins negotiations.

Or maybe they'll both have a go.  Not working for the NHS, I have limited experience of fax machines...  (I do however have a V.34 handshake as my SMS notification tone.)

[FifeingEejit]

Not sure what this has to do with email, but I'm sure ePharmacy has been a thing for a while. A long while.

Although the pharmacy do still have to collect the patient side slip before processing it if you've agreed to collect it directly from them.



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[hellymedic]

Not sure what this has to do with email, but I'm sure ePharmacy has been a thing for a while. A long while.
Although the pharmacy do still have to collect the patient side slip before processing it if you've agreed to collect it directly from them.
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As Partner picks up my medication, I don't know about any paperwork at the pharmacy.
My contact with GPs has been phone, SMS & e-consult.

[hellymedic]

Hang on, I thought the originating fax started the handshake?  Opposite of modems, where the recipient begins negotiations.

Or maybe they'll both have a go.  Not working for the NHS, I have limited experience of fax machines...  (I do however have a V.34 handshake as my SMS notification tone.)

If I set my Ancient Behemoth to TEL/FAX and you call it, it will warble at you if I don't answer within a couple of rings.
If I set it to ANS/FAX, you'll hear my dulcet voice. If you then press ** , you'll get a warble...

[FifeingEejit]

I get half of a bit of pink paper with stuff printed it when I collect my pot of roids.

If I'm not using emis patient access to order my next pot of roids then I tick the roids box on it, write on it "collect from lomond" (which i forgot last time) and post it in the letterbox in my local spar, when I go along for my new pot of roids there's another pink slip in it.

I've now got emis access again so I don't need to do the ticking, writing and posting bit as Ill do that electronically in emis.

It's a long way from the day I took a hand scrawled bit of paper torn out of a prescription pad in to the old pharmacy in Newport and the pharmacist asked me what instructions the doctor gave me as he couldn't read it.
It was some nasty anti-biotic in massive capsules I couldn't swallow for a rsther nasty toe infection, the name of which I can't remember but I do remember the instruction was to take two after food three times a day, and the trauma of trying to swallow the blighters.

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[barakta]

Don't speak to me about the NHS and email.

The English NHS Accessible Information Standard requires that people with sensory impairments (like deafness) are able to use email instead of phones and that emails should get a response within 24 hours.

1 hospital simply won't do emails except via PALS and PALS just go into ignoring mode. One complaint issued. PALS told to reply... PALS don't reply. Complaints don't respond to a chase. STRENUOUSLY worded chaser email got a "oh yeah, we'll get back to you by 15th June for complaint, we'll pole PALS"... So 2 months of fuckery just to get 1 complaint round sorted. I'm bashing those fucks back to the PHSO as useless as they are and I will keep raising PHSO complaints every time... PHSO already hate me cos I told them to resile and resubmit their shitshow of a 1st line response - 15 months after I raised it.

2nd hospital is better but random staff aren't so I have to chase. And annoying person didn't answer the KEY question I asked, so I've had to re-ask.

It's very difficult for people who can't use phones which is very common. And 5 years after the law kicked in, my sympathy for noncompliance is zero.

[Bledlow]

My prescriptions are sent by Electronic Magick to the pharmacy of my choice two furlongs hence.

I nominated my pharmacy with the practice. My pharmacy was formerly the local branch of Boots but is now a perfumery that does not stock Chanel.

Same as my prescriptions. And Mrs B's. Been doing it for years.

[fimm]

Not sure what this has to do with email, but I'm sure ePharmacy has been a thing for a while. A long while.

"ePharmacy" as a name for the process is NHS Scotland only (I know, I've been a member of the team that looks after a part of it for over a decade).
I assume there are similar processes in England but I don't know about them.

[FifeingEejit]

Not sure what this has to do with email, but I'm sure ePharmacy has been a thing for a while. A long while.

"ePharmacy" as a name for the process is NHS Scotland only (I know, I've been a member of the team that looks after a part of it for over a decade).
I assume there are similar processes in England but I don't know about them.

Aye, it seems like we're ahead on some things people don't see (interconnection of systems and boards, although thats not saying much... ) and England's ahead on things thay look good because people can see them (mobile phone app?)



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[jsabine]

Not sure what this has to do with email, but I'm sure ePharmacy has been a thing for a while. A long while.

"ePharmacy" as a name for the process is NHS Scotland only (I know, I've been a member of the team that looks after a part of it for over a decade).
I assume there are similar processes in England but I don't know about them.

When I rang my (London) GP a couple of weeks ago and discussed him prescribing antibiotics over the phone, I asked him to send the script electromagically to our local pharmacy, because that's what they did about 8 years ago when I had a repeat prescription. He demurred, and said he'd prefer to upload it to some hub or other, because then any pharmacy with access could fill it for me.

Of course, then he ended up sending me off for a second opinion rather than just giving me drugs, so I don't know what the hub is called, whether our local place can access it, or indeed whether the system works at all, but he seemed to have confidence in it.

[FifeingEejit]

I found some documentation about the NHS England Electronic Pharmacy stuff while doing other stuff today.
Didn't dig in at all because I was doing other stuff (mashing my head off Trak/Caché/Mumps trying to find out where a really useful bit of NHS Scotland data set is being recorded in a dateset for 1960s masachooses)
Not even sure how I managed to find it while doing that since the 2 are totally unrelated, was probably skiving between swearing fits.

[DaveReading]

When I was sorting out some post-hospitalisation stuff with my GP at the beginning of last year (including getting the evidence to have my driving licence restored), the ability to communicate with the surgery via email would have been very helpful, but they point-blank refused to give me even a general admin email address.

[Kim]

The NHS suffers from the common organisational delusion that email is horrendously insecure, while fax, telephone calls^[1] and postal letters are somehow not.

This trickles down to policies and systems.  Front line staff use email internally all the time, but aren't allowed to use it with patients unless they have super special permission.  And even then, they're not allowed to say anything clinical.


_{[1] There's a related phenomenon where they withold CID and repeatedly call the phone you can't hear on, rather the one you can.  As if an 07 number magically imparts powers of confidentiality, like the cubicle curtains in Casualty.}

[ian]

Indeed, our surgery insist you fill in a form on their website to transmit a query to them, and the response generates a link back to their website where you can read it. The link comes back via SMS but you do get a notification by email that you've initially submitted the form.

I can't help but wonder what problem they think they're solving.

[Kim]

Indeed, our surgery insist you fill in a form on their website to transmit a query to them, and the response generates a link back to their website where you can read it. The link comes back via SMS but you do get a notification by email that you've initially submitted the form.

I can't help but wonder what problem they think they're solving.

Eavesdropping on the wire, obviously.   

[FifeingEejit]

NHS.Net e-mail and its successors are considered secure enough for sending details about patients around, as are a small list of other uk government e-mail servers.

Anything outside of them, nuh.

Ignoring fax which is of course going to punt the info insecurely out a machine, telephone you can confirm you've got the patient on the end of the line, letter you've got a chance of seeing if it's been intercepted on route.

Sending patients text messages was a bit of a concern for a long time because you don't know whose going to read it at the other end of it
It once kiboshed a GUM clinics plan to get a bit more technological with their results service.

Of course the same applies to letters but letters are just accepted as the recipient is going to open it or going to allow someone to open it where as if you pick up your partners phone and see on the screen the words "Syphalis - Positive" well...

[telstarbox]

I've been emailing my NHS consultant since before Covid about stuff - much easier than missing each other on the phone. Admittedly I found their NHS email address online and took the initiative but they were happy to carry it on.

[ian]

Letters and texts can go to anyone, when the doctor phones me, he or she says 'is that ian' and I say 'yes.'

None of these are more secure than email.

That said, if I had blazing cockrot, you'd all be the first to know.

[FifeingEejit]

Letters and texts can go to anyone, when the doctor phones me, he or she says 'is that ian' and I say 'yes.'

None of these are more secure than email.

That said, if I had blazing cockrot, you'd all be the first to know.

Yes, but apparently other people don't open letters addressed to others and marked private and confidential. (not sure if that's a legal, convention or bullshit thing)

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[FifeingEejit]

Just used this afternoons lavatory visit to check, seems opening postal communication addressed to someone else without reasonable excuse is punishable by a fine at level 5 whatever that is.

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[ScumOfTheRoad]

The original nhs.net email system used X400 email - which is the ISO(?) standard for email, not that plebian SMTP stuff.
Somewhere there was a gateway or gateways to SMTP

I believe X400 does have advantages with security and also role based addresses - ie the concept is that you can send email to ent.surgeon@hospital.nhs.net and if the surgeon changed jobs the new one would get the email.
My knowledge here is horribly out of date.