More Orwellian porcine equality.

One of the old Party’s great white elephants that it has bequeathed to the British public that is neither use nor ornament is the idea of the national Summary Care Record (SCR). The idea is that there would be a huge but “secure” summary of everyone’s medical record available to a selected few million plus (bureaucrats) at the touch of a button to preserve patient confidentiality.

If you were unlucky enough to have a cardiac arrest in some unknown ‘hood in the UK then while you were lying unconscious and rapidly approaching the reaper’s scythe, the caring medical team would find your wallet and immediately find some form of ID. Those caring for you (robbing you?) would have achieved basic cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) at this stage and then they would then proceed with no delay to advanced Party CPR.

They would reach for their own personal life saving NHS Smartcard and rapidly log on to the computer by your side in the street where you happened to have collapsed and (in a mere matter of minutes) find your SCR.

Having found out all about your past medical history, drugs, allergies, address and telephone number all of which are essential before any medical professional could access the how to do CPR protocol on the same street side computer (what a marvel NHS IT is when saving lives) and only then could any Smartcard enabled individual start to do something useful such as save your life.

Given that our staff frequently cannot access anything Smartcard enabled service for hours at a time let us return to the real world. Fortunately not all of us live in Holby City, or work in the BBC Doctor GP practice, and if you were to have a cardiac arrest at ND Central you would not be treated by accessing a protocol or your SCR but by people who were trained and knew what to do without the “benefit” of either. They also know where to place a Smartcard for maximum patient benefit in such a situation.

The benevolence of the Party extends to applying the well known Orwellian pig principle to all who were to be allowed to opt out of the SCR and we were told that important people like Tony Blair would not have their records accessible to Jo or Josephine GP or a drug addicted clerk in a PCT typing pool. A little article shows that the new Party has had a little rethink and you can read about it here. The comments underneath are quite good too.

It would appear that a new super race are to be extended the politician’s porcine privilege of being SCR invisible. Now who might you ask are these? MI5 and 6 operatives? Undercover police officers? Other people whose work places them in life threatening and dangerous situations which might lead to them being targeted by international terrorists or criminal gangs? Teachers? Magistrates? High Court Judges?

Well according to the article only a mere 2000 people are currently considered Blairly important enough to be “flagged” but that number might soon increase for the new super race are none other than . . .

Celebrities.

Thank God that Jedward will be afforded the same security as the blessed Tony Blair while poor Professor Hawking’s medical record will be on public display.

The comment at the end by a GP that

“The need for politicians and celebrities to opt out of the care record demonstrates that it remains the chocolate firewall of NHS IT.”

is we think understated for a bar of chocolate would hold more water than the security of the NHS SCR sieve with its million plus holes.

Praise be to the Party for once again demonstrating its commitment to extending porcine equality to all pigs it serves and for value for money in procuring white elephants.

The Americans said they would put a man on the moon (and bring him back too!) within a decade and did. How long has the NHS computer system been in the delivering nothing useful stages and at what cost? Recession anyone and possible savings?