retention schedules

Summary

The requester asked for data on record retention schedules and detailed information regarding the MediViewer digital health project at Nobles Hospital. The Department of Health and Social Care issued a revised response correcting an error on retention data and provided partial information on record destruction, while withholding other requested project details.

Key Facts

• The Department issued a revised response on 01 September 2017 to correct an error regarding records held beyond their retention schedule.
• Adult Social Care Home Care Team held 80 service user records due for destruction.
• Children and Families Social Care identified 28,680 files beyond their retention date, with 23,568 destroyed on 25 August 2017.
• Cummal Mooar and Southlands care homes held no records outside their retention period.
• The response indicates that some requested information regarding MediViewer audits, budgets, and training could not be provided.

Data Disclosed

• 2017-08-03
• 2017-09-01
• 2017-08-25
• 80
• 28,680
• 23,568
• February 2017
• BS10008

Original Request

1) How many records (in whatever format) are currently held by your department that are beyond their retention schedule date? 2) Re: Mediviewer at Nobles Hospital, you state in a previous FOI response that no paper medical records will be destroyed until mediviewer is compliant with BS10008 - provide any audit reports of mediviewer in reference to BS10008. 3) Provide all project management reports regarding mediviewer (digital health records, new project) from start of the project to current date. 4) Provide a full budget report to date of the cost of implemention of mediviewer. I want this in excel format, broken down into different categories of what these public funds have been spent on ie. training, installation, staff costs/wages, etc, further broken down by expenditure per month. 5) Provide all mediviewer staff training manuals. 6) Provide the procedure if a patient wishes to opt out of their health record to be stored on mediviewer. 7) Which wards / departments of nobles have now transitioned across to mediviewer. 8) Prove the total number of staff who have complete mediviewer training to current date.

Data Tables (5)

Full Response Text

Department of Health and Social Care Rheynn Slaynt as Kiarail y Theay Page 1 of 46 FOIA/DHSC/rvsd/01 Chief Executive: Malcolm Couch By email: Freedom of Information Team Department of Health & Social Care Chief Executive’s Office Crookall House Demesne Road Douglas Isle of Man, IM1 3QA Tel: Email: Website: Date: FOI Reference: (01624) 642621 foi.dhsc@gov.im www.gov.im/dhsc 01 September 2017 IM97-965i Dear REQUEST UNDER THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 2015 (“the Act”) Thank you for your request to the Department of Health and Social Care, dated 03 August 2017 Your request You asked for: Question 01: “How many records (in whatever format) are currently held by your department that are beyond their retention schedule date?” Question 02: “Re: Mediviewer at Nobles Hospital, you state in a previous FOI response that no paper medical records will be destroyed until MediViewer is compliant with BS10008 - provide any audit reports of MediViewer in reference to BS10008.”
Question 03: “Provide all project management reports regarding MediViewer (digital health records, new project) from start of the project to current date.” Question 04: “Provide a full budget report to date of the cost of implementation of MediViewer. I want this in excel format, broken down into different categories of what these public funds have been spent on i.e. training, installation, staff costs/wages, etc, further broken down by expenditure per month.” Question 05: “Provide all MediViewer staff training manuals.” Question 06: “Provide the procedure if a patient wishes to opt out of their health record to be stored on MediViewer.” Question 07: “Which wards / departments of nobles have now transitioned across to MediViewer” Question 08: “Prove the total number of staff who have complete MediViewer training to current date.”

Page 2 of 46 FOIA/DHSC/rvsd/01 Revised response to your request Upon review of the disclosure made 31 Aug 2017, it became apparent that the original response to Question 01 was incorrect; this was due to a misunderstanding by the Freedom of Information Team of the response provided by the Mental Health Directorate. This was of no fault of the Mental Health Directorate. The Department fully adheres to the principles of Freedom of Information, public accountability, openness and transparency, therefore the actual response for the Mental Health Directorate is now disclosed for your kind reference* On behalf of the Department of Health and Social Care, please accept our sincere apologies for not providing you with this information as part of our original response and for any inconvenience caused. Response to your request We are pleased to be able to provide a response to your request with answers to some of your questions; while our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information you have requested. The reasons and statutory exemption sections and reasons are shown as part of the corresponding answers below.
Question 01: How many records (in whatever format) are currently held by your department that are beyond their retention schedule date In response to Question 01 the Service Areas were requested to provide a snapshot of records held outside their retention period on the date this request was received. In addition they were also asked to detail any destruction regimes, relevant projects and implementation plans in order to provide you with as much information and help as possible: • Adult Services Care Homes There is a difference in the number of records held and therefore the retention periods reached across the Adult Services Care Homes. Of those able to ascertain the information requested: o Adult Social Care Home Care Team hold 80 service user records due to be destroyed this month in line with their destruction schedule
o Cummal Mooar holds no records outside their retention period o Southlands hold no records outside their retention period

• Children and Families Social Care Children and Families commenced a project in February 2017 to identify and destroy historic files past their retention schedule. To date 28,680 files have been identified as beyond their retention date, 23,568 were destroyed on 25 August 2017 as part of planned work under that project. The remainder need a final check before they can be approved for destruction. To be clear these are electronic ‘files’ containing only basic demographic information on the client and reason for referral that were brought forward from a legacy computer system. A further 3,377 historic children’s files have been identified where the retention date was unclear - these are being meticulously gone through to identify what the correct retention period is. 1,160 have been assessed to date and of those 512 have been marked for destruction. 559 current children’s files have reached their retention period in this calendar year and will be purged with our next batch by the end of this year.

Page 3 of 46 FOIA/DHSC/rvsd/01

• Family Practitioners Service Due to the volume of records held by Family Practitioners it is most cost and time effective to destroy records in batches at scheduled intervals throughout the year. As a snapshot this Service currently has the following records outside their retention period that are due to be destroyed at their next scheduled destruction date: o 37 boxes of GP records
o 60 boxes of Service forms and contact sheets and accounts relating to their various operations

• *Mental Health Directorate - revised MHS introduced a new Retention Policy in January 2017 with a 2 ½ year implementation plan to meet requirements. Therefore we are unable to identify at the present time if there any records which are held outside of their retention period.

• Noble’s Hospital Medical Records Due to the volume of records held by Noble’s Hospital Medical Records destroy records in batches at scheduled intervals throughout the year. As a snapshot this Service Area currently has the following records outside their retention period that are due to be destroyed at their next scheduled destruction date: o Approximately 689 General Health records of deceased patients o Approximately 460 General Health records o Approximately 5,800 Maternity records
o Approximately 3,500 Emergency Department cards

• Occupational Health Occupational Health are holding no records past their retention period. The nature of their work, including the investigation of workplace exposures, requires the majority of their records to be kept for a minimum of 40 years. The Service has not yet been in operation for that length of time and so the majority of their records have not yet reached their retention period

• Public Health Directorate The Public Health Directorate have one file held past their retention period that will be destroyed at their next scheduled destruction date While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance those Service Areas listed above do not hold or cannot, after taking reasonable steps to do so, find the information that you have requested (section 11(3)(a) of the Act). Question 02: Re: Mediviewer at Nobles Hospital, you state in a previous FOI response that no paper medical records will be destroyed until MediViewer is compliant with BS10008 - provide any audit reports of MediViewer in reference to BS10008 In response to Question 02, please find the latest audit report and certificate of compliance in Appendix 01.
Question 03: Provide all project management reports regarding MediViewer (digital health records, new project) from start of the project to current date

Page 4 of 46 FOIA/DHSC/rvsd/01 In response to Question 03, please find the Digital Health Record (DHR) Project Status Summaries in Appendix 02. Those “missing” Summaries indicate dates when Project Board meetings were not held; this either due to holidays or other meetings that effecting the attendance of the Project Board. Question 04: Provide a full budget report to date of the cost of implementation of MediViewer. I want this in excel format, broken down into different categories of what these public funds have been spent on i.e. training, installation, staff costs/wages, etc., further broken down by expenditure per month While our aim is to provide information wherever possible, in this instance the information requested in Question 04 is exempt under section 30(2)(b) of the Act as it constitutes as its disclosure would prejudice the commercial interest of IMMJ Systems (the supplier of the MediViewer system). As section 30(2)(b) is a qualified exemption, it is subject to a public interest test. The public interest must be something that is of serious concern and benefit to the public at large. Factors in favour of disclosing the information include: • Disclosure would show where public money is being spent, how much public money is being spent and how IMMJ Systems arrived at the process • Disclosure would hold the Department to account for their stewardship of public resources • Disclosure would ensure that commercial activities, including the procurement process, are conducted in an open and honest way • Disclosure would mean competing business could respond better to future public sector opportunities. Factors in favour of maintaining the exemption include: • Disclosure of the information would affect a company’s ability to participate competitively in a commercial activity (directly or indirectly)?
• Disclosure of would be revealing commercially sensitive information. • Prejudice would be likely to occur as having a detrimental impact on commercial revenue or the ability to obtain supplies or secure finance. Prejudice would also be likely to occur has weakening their position in a competitive environment by revealing market sensitive information or information of potential usefulness to competitors. In assessing the weight to be attributed to each of the factors in favour of disclosing the information and maintaining the exemption, the Department has taken the following into consideration • The severity of the impact of the prejudice has been considered and it has been determined that disclosure would have a substantial impact upon the commercial interests of the company, the Department and the relationship between them • The age of the information has been considered and as this is a current and ongoing arrangement, it would not be appropriate to disclose the information • How far disclosure would further the public interests identified above has been considered and it has been identified that there would be little if not no public interest in the breakdown of this information. With this, the availability of any similar information in the public domain has been considered and the requester is

Page 5 of 46 FOIA/DHSC/rvsd/01 directed to: https://www.gov.im/media/1357071/cost-of-digital-health-record- scanning-and-cost-of-misl-use.pdf, where the total amount of for this project has been published in a previous Freedom of Information response (reference IM87- 863i), although is not broken down as requested • There likelihood of disclosure correcting any misinformation has been considered and it is unlikely that disclosure of a breakdown of this information, in addition to the link provided above would rectify any misinformation • As the information requested has been received from confidential sources there is a strong likelihood that the relationship between the Department and IMMJ Systems would be damaged by disclosure and reduce the likelihood of information or services being made available in the future • There is a need to protect the commercial interests of the private sector, which plays an important role in the general health of the economy.
• There must be consideration of matters such as the maintenance of intellectual property and the need to protect the flow of commercial secrets to public authorities In taking all of these factors into account the Department determines that the factors in favour of maintaining the exemption outweigh the factors in favour of disclosing the information. Question 05: Provide all MediViewer staff training manuals In response to Question 05, While our aim is to provide information wherever possible, in this instance the information is exempt from disclosure under section 30(2)(a) of the Act as it constitutes a trade secret.
As section 30(2)(a) is a qualified exemption, it is subject to a public interest test. The public interest must be something that is of serious concern and benefit to the public at large. Factors in favour of disclosing the information include:  It would inform the public of the training activities being undertaken and provide reassurance  It would enable the public to better scrutinise the public monies spent and the resources dedicated to training Factors in favour of maintaining the exemption include:  There is a strong public interest in protecting the information because of the level of investment involved  There is a strong public interest in maintaining the exemption due to the extent to which disclosure would undermine IMMJ Systems competitive advantage as well as their ability to generate income; therefore the information is of commercial value.  There is a public interest in maintaining the exemption in order to protect the training techniques of IMMJ Systems as well as protecting the technical knowledge of how their system works which would be harmful in the hands of a competitor  How far disclosure would further the public interests identified above has been considered and it has been identified that there would be no current public interest in having access to these training documents, rather there is a public interest in knowing training has and will continue to take place to provide the services related to MediViewer

Page 6 of 46 FOIA/DHSC/rvsd/01  The specific information requested constitutes a trade secret and intellectual property in line with the contact in place with IMMJ Systems and the Department In assessing the weight to be attributed to each of the factors in favour of disclosing the information and maintaining the exemption, the Department has taken the following into consideration  As the information in question is current and in use by not just Noble’s but other organisations that use Mediviewer disclosure would prejudice the working practices of IMMJ Systems and potentially their other customers In taking all of these factors into account the Department determines that the factors in favour of maintaining the exemption outweigh the factors in favour of disclosing the information. Question 06: Provide the procedu

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