Health: Online Services

Lord Leigh of Hurley Excerpts

Monday 23rd April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

That is an excellent question. It is important to distinguish between the independent sector and the NHS. The CQC report was about the independent sector, so a patient would continue to be registered with their NHS GP practice and have an augmenting consultation, if you like. With GP at Hand, as it is an NHS practice, they would switch their registration. One issue that has come up is whether people have full enough information about that switching, which is one thing that NHS England is reviewing in the independent review that it has commissioned about the success or otherwise of that service.

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

What steps are the Government taking to encourage people—I appreciate that they cannot force them—throughout the UK to use only online medical services which are registered with the CQC?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

This is of course the way the economy is going in general and is a great passion of the Secretary of State. Indeed, he made a commitment at the NHS Expo conference last year that, by the end of this year, every patient would have access to an NHS app online which will enable them to do things such as book consultations, see who has viewed their medical record and set their preferences about things such as blood and transplant donations. A huge stream of work is going on to ensure that those services are available to all patients in the NHS.