Chamber and committees

Practical Fire Safety Guidancefor Care Homes is the first in a seriesof fire safety guides being produced by the Scottish Executive to assist those withresponsibilities under Part 3 of the Fire (Scotland) Act 2005, as amended.Part 3 introduced a new fire safety regime for the majority of non-domestic premisesin Scotland (including care homes) with effect from 1 October 2006.

The new regime is based on theprinciple of risk assessment and while the legislation does not refer to an assessor’scompetence or prescribe either a level of qualification or period of fire safetyexperience, advice is contained within Practical Fire Safety Guidance for CareHomes.

The term “proficient” is usedin paragraph 32 of the guide in relation to the undertaking of a fire safety riskassessment: “It is essential that the person who undertakes the fire safety riskassessment is proficient to do so.” Paragraph 33 of the guide provides further information,advising that persons can be considered proficient where they have sufficient technicaltraining and experience or knowledge, both to carry out a fire safety risk assessmentand understand fully the procedures and management involved, and to undertake properlythe fire safety measures referred to in the guide.

Proficiency is therefore uniqueto the premises and the circumstances, with risk assessment in complex premiseslikely to require a greater level of knowledge and expertise. General guidance onthe fire safety risk assessment process is available at www.infoscotland.com/firelaw.

GPASS does not manage local GPASSservers and hence details of down-time are not recorded by the supplier GPASS. However,over the past two years there have been 441 calls to helpdesk noting local serversystem down. This represents less than one incident per practice every four yearson average.

With respect to centrally-managedGPASS servers, there are 20 practices in this category. Down-time data is availablefor the last 10 months and shows a total of eight instances of down-time amountingto 10 hours. Of the total hours between 8am and 6pm this represents 0.47%.

There are no known faults inGPASS version 5.7, the latest version of the software, which could affect patientsafety or confidentiality. Version 5.4 had a known fault which could affect patientsafety of clinical notes in certain rare circumstances but this has been correctedin version 5.7. Version 5.6 had a minor issue with display of dates on summary sheets.Practices have been notified of all such issues, given the means to identify anypotential instances of the fault, and encouraged to move to the latest version wherethe fault is removed.

The number of GP practices usingthe GPASS system stands at 857, which represents 83% of Scottish practices.

The releases scheduled with datesat current time are as follows:

Release	Due Date
GP Contract improvements	October 2006
GPASS Clinical 1.1	October  2006
Acute Medication Services (ePharmacy)	November 2006
Maintenance Release 2	November  2006
Drug Dictionary updates	November 2006
Version for Scottish Prison Service	November 2006
Version for State Hospital	December 2006
Update for SCI Gateway Interface	December 2006
Maintenance Release 3	February 2007
Scottish Enhanced Functionality 3	February 2007
GPASS Clinical 2	March 2007
Update for SCI Diabetes Collaboration	March 2007

 

Releases scheduled but with datesnot yet finalised at current time are as follows:

Release	Provisional Date
Drug Dictionary 46	November 2006
Drug Dictionary 47	February 2007
Read Code Update	February 2007
GP2GP (electronic transfer of records between practices when patients move)	March 2007
Update to Data Protection	March 2007
Read Code Formularies	March 2007
Dispensing	March 2007

 

The consultants gave an initialreport on their emerging findings to the eHealth Strategy Board on 28 June. Theboard asked for further work and consultation, which will be completed shortly.The final report will be available when that work is complete.

According to GPASS records, of the 857 GP practices in Scotland using GPASS, 818 use the latest version 5.7, 38 use version5.6, zero use 5.5 and 1 uses version 5.4.

The Executive does not collectinformation on the amount of nicotine contained in cigarettes. Responsibility forcollecting and testing tar, nicotine and carbon monoxide yields in cigarettes underArticle 5 of the Tobacco Products (Manufacture, Presentation and Sale) (Safety)Regulations 2002, falls to the U.K. Department of Health.

IT functionality is requiredfor three of the four enhanced services rolled-out in 2006-07. Specificallythese services are (a) CVD risk register (b) people with learning disabilitiesand (c) carers.

The following table shows ITimplementation dates for each of these three enhanced services (GPASS practicesonly):

Enhanced Service	Date of IT implementation
(a) CVD risk register:	Phase 1: 30 May 2006 Phase 2: 30 June 2006
(b) people with learning disabilities	30 June 2006
(c) carers	30 June 2006

 

The new clinical domains inthe Quality and Outcomes Framework for 2006-07 are atrial fibrillation, chronickidney disease, dementia, depression, mental health and palliative care.

All of these new domainsrequired additional data capture functionality.

For GPASS practices thisfunctionality was made available from 6 July 2006.