FAMILY doctors in the North-East are the first in the country to buy into a new software package which promises to improve safety for primary care patients.

It means GPs in Durham Dales, Easington, Sedgefield and North Durham will receive full details of their patients’ hospital treatment immediately they are discharged without having to wait for four to six weeks.

Currently, GPs are usually only sent a brief, sometimes handwritten discharge letter after their patients leave hospital.

This often results in GPs being given inadequate discharge information until the full details are processed at a later date.

This exposes the patient to the risk of the doctor being unaware of the required follow-up treatment and possible changes to medication.

In August a patient safety alert was issued by NHS England after it was discovered that between October 2012 and September 2013 there were around 10,000 reports of patient safety incidents relating to discharge.

The alert said the failure to provide medical and social care staff with adequate and timely information at the point of handover could result in avoidable death and serious harm to patients.

At the time Dr Michael Dixon, chairman of the NHS Alliance, which represents NHS trusts, said: “We cannot continue to risk patient safety, nor can we continue to fund avoidable readmissions, simply because too many hospitals regularly fail to get critical information to GPs when their patients are discharged. The situation is high-risk and unacceptable. It wastes money and threatens lives.”

The root of the problem is the current incompatibility between the computer systems used by NHS hospitals and those used by GPs.

The new software allows family doctors to bypass the delays and read the discharge notes immediately.

Durham Dales, Easington and Sedgefield Clinical Commissioning Group (DDES CCG) and North Durham Clinical Commissioning Group are the first in the UK to purchase specialist software produced by Wetherby-based company BlackBox Medical.

Dr Stewart Findlay, chief clinical officer for the DDES CCGT, said: “We were pleased to find a solution to this patient safety issues which enables us to assure all the patients in our region that we consider their wellbeing a high priority. It will also improve the efficiency of our CCG management team.”