HealthWatch seeks 'assurance' over Harmoni out-of-hours service

The minutes said: “The committee also heard of the existence of different practises in relation to checks on the out-of-hours patient call records where it was reported that in some instances this was being done by an administrator.

“Although it was recognised that contract assurance checks were carried out by the commissioning team, HealthWatch believed that patients needed assurance that case by case checks were done by their own GP.”

It added: “The committee were made aware of the difficulties with gaps in time before patient records are made available to Harmoni. The pilot being introduced in New Malden to link the different data systems had not yet commenced but should alleviate this problem and if it worked well would be rolled out borough-wide.”