§ Mr. BlunkettTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what evaluation has been made of the ability of Read coding to map to other classification systems.
§ Mr. SackvilleA report published in 1988 by the joint computing group of the Royal College of General Practitioners and the General Medical Services Committee of the British Medical Association1, confirmed that the Read codes were compatible with the World Health Organisation's International Statistical Classification of Diseases, Injuries and Causes of Death (ninth revision) (Injuries and Causes of Death-9), and with the Classification of Surgical Operations and Procedures produced by the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys (OPCS).
In 1992 the Read codes were the subject of a report produced by the OPCS diagnostic support service2. This is the World Health Organisation's London collaborating centre for the classification of diseases. The report described an exercise to validate the cross-referencing of the Read codes to ICD-9. The report's recommendations have now been implemented.
Copies of both reports will be placed in the Library.
839W1 "The Classification of General Practice Data": GMSCRCGP Joint Computing Group Technical Working Party. JCG 20 1987–88.
2 "Report on the Validation of the Cross-Referencing of NHSCCC-5 Codes to ICD-9": OPCS Diagnostic Support Service and WHO London Collaborating Centre for the Classification of Diseases.
§ Mr. BlunkettTo ask the Secretary of State for Health who owns the intellectual property rights to the Read codes.
§ Mr. SackvilleThe intellectual property rights to the Read codes were purchased on behalf of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health in 1990 thereby making the Read codes Crown copyright.
§ Mr. BlunkettTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what mechanisms have been put in place to ensure that the NHS will have the appropriate analytic and interpretive skills to make use of Read codes.
§ Mr. SackvilleThe analytical and interpretive skills to use Read codes are no different from those currently exercised by clinicians, clinical coders and others in using other coding and classification systems.
However, the National Health Service Management Executive's information management group will be providing training packages in the use of Read codes, tailored to the needs of various professional groups in the NHS.
The specialty working groups developing Read codes are keeping clinicians informed: within the last 18 months they have produced over 100 publications and given 200 presentations.
§ Mr. BlunkettTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what discussions she has had with the National Health Service Management Executive regarding the use of Read codes within the national health service.
§ Mr. SackvilleMy right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health has agreed with the National Health Service Management Executive that, with the acknowledged support of the medical profession, it should promote and facilitate the use of Read codes within the NHS.
The NHS Management Executive's information management and technology strategy, launched by Ministers in December 1992, has the Read codes as one of its key elements. Copies of the strategy are available in the Library.
§ Mr. BlunkettTo ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will publish details of the financial terms under which the clinical coding centre at Loughborough was taken into ownership by the NHS.
§ Mr. SackvilleThe national health service for coding and classification was created following the purchase in 1990 of the intellectual property rights for the Read codes. The financial terms of the purchase are commercially confidential.
§ Mr. BlunkettTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what financial arrangements exist for national health service organisations and others wishing to adopt the Read coding system.
§ Mr. SackvilleA recent executive letter, EL(93)87, copies of which are available in the Library, has announced840W changes in the forms of Read code licence now available to secondary care users in the national health service. Licences are available for individual providers, groups of providers and for all secondary care users within the NHS regions, at increasing levels of discount.
At present a different mechanism applies to general medical practitioners. The suppliers of GP computer systems pay a licence fee in order to include Read codes in their systems: that cost is recovered in the charges paid by GPs to use one of those systems.