A LEAKED report has revealed senior hospital consultants’ concerns that a massive programme to scan millions of pages of medical records into a new computer system could be putting patients at risk.

The Royal Free’s consultant staff committee – the voice of top-level medics at the Hampstead hospital – has warned that patients are arriving for appointments without their medical history being available.

A backlog in the “scanning bureau” meant patients’ medical records were stuck in a warehouse in Hertfordshire when they were needed at the hospital.

“This is a big issue as patient care is at risk,” an accompanying note to the New Journal said. The consultants’ concerns included “patient notes filed against the wrong patient”, “many referral letters are not available” and a “very frustrating” new computer system being hamstrung by “slow performance”.

The New Journal was invited to the hospital executive suite last week to hear the Royal Free’s response from three of its most senior directors.

IT boss Will Smart said: “There have been instances when that [a missing note] has been the case. This was one of a series of meetings we are having with clinicians and we are addressing pro-actively the issues. We are trying very hard.”

Medical director Professor Stephen Powis confirmed a detail in the report that said the hospital had bought 250 new PCs and 400 “dual screens” while upgrading 600 older computers following claims that the system was “running slowly”. 

He played down the significance of the concerns over medical safety, saying the problem of missing records existed before the digitisation programme, and that electronic records would dramatically improve and speed up NHS patient care.

He added: “If anyone feels that implementing anything has an unexpected impact on patients, then that is the most important feedback we can get. But we do not think this is a safety issue.”

In April, the Royal Free broke free of the widely criticised National Programme for IT and agreed its own electronic data records management policy to convert 750,000 patient files – containing millions of pages overall – into digitally accessible files.

The 21st century ideal is that medics will be able to access patient information at the touch of a button rather than spending hours sifting through the “library” on the lower-ground floor for the information. Now, when an appointment is booked, the patient’s 

file is couriered to private company MISL in Hertfordshire, where the documents are scanned and sent back to the hospital. 

Department for Health accounts show MISL was paid around £120,000 in September and October for Royal Free Hospital “photocopying”. 

Professor Powis said 20,000 patient files are being scanned each week by MISL and that “eventually” the old-style paper records would be destroyed.

The company providing the computer software is OpenText, a subsidiary of American software giant OpenText.